#### A Companion to Anticlassicisms in the Cinquecento

# Classicism and Beyond / Il classicismo e oltre

Edited by / A cura di Marc Föcking, Susanne A. Friede, Florian Mehltretter, Angela Oster

Editorial Board / Comitato scientifico Antonio Corsaro (Università degli studi di Urbino Carlo Bo) Chiara Lastraioli (Université de Tours) Sarah Rolfe Prodan (Stanford University) Dietrich Scholler (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)

Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)

Vol. 1

# A Companion to Anticlassicisms in the Cinquecento

Edited by Marc Föcking, Susanne A. Friede, Florian Mehltretter and Angela Oster

Publication funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) – project number I 3740-G30.

Research funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – FO 227/6-1, ME 4135/2-1 and OS 492/1-1, project number 398229063 – and by the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF, Austria) – I 3740-G30.

ISBN 978-3-11-078333-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-078343-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-078347-6 ISSN 2940-0074 e-ISSN 2940-0082 DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110783438

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### Contents

Marc Föcking, Susanne A. Friede, Florian Mehltretter, Angela Oster Introduction: Four Types of Anti-classicism 1



Marc Föcking, Daniel Fliege


Florian Mehltretter (with Sascha Resch, Giulia Lombardi, Matteo Cazzato)





Angela Oster


Bibliography 279

Index nominum 327

### Marc Föcking, Susanne A. Friede, Florian Mehltretter, Angela Oster Introduction

#### Four Types of Anti-classicism

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" – by means of this famous argutia, William Shakespeare distanced himself from the formulae of the love poetry of his time (sonnet 130, Shakespeare 1986, 141), offering instead a meditation on rhetoric and truth, as well as on the universality versus the individuality of beauty.

While it is possible to read this line as a baroque witticism, it could also be viewed as an act of opposition against the perceived dominance of a discursive scheme, or (in a wider sense) a 'classicist' norm, in this case: Petrarchism. In the latter half of the sixteenth century in particular (but not only), such gestures abounded, directed against an assortment of normative tendencies, ranging from Petrarchism to Aristotelianism. Some of these remonstrances have been well-studied, while others are fairly unknown. Yet until today, the phenomena in question have never in their totality been the object of a systematic overview or a typology hoping to incorporate a certain degree of theoretical abstraction.

The present book will attempt this, sketching an outline of such a synthesis for the Italian Cinquecento (and integrating some of the lesser-known parts of this repertoire for the first time), in the full knowledge of its necessary incompleteness or even reductivity. Readers who would like to immerse themselves even deeper into the manifold varieties of non-classicist or anti-classicist writing in Italian sixteenth-century literature, will find ample documentation, analysis and a plethora of new editions in the work of the Italian research group Cinquecento plurale (http://dsu.uniroma3.it/cinquecentoplurale/).

The present volume, while relying on much of the work done by this group, is the product of an inter-university research project on "Antiklassizismen im Cinquecento" (https://www.antiklassizismen.italianistik.uni-muenchen.de) with a different focus. It proposes a model designed to distinguish four types of 'anticlassicisms' (hence the plural in our title), differentiated as to their mode and their object of dissent or deviation. The book features four major chapters, each of which studies one particular type of anti-classicism. Every chapter takes the form of an overview, interspersed with more detailed readings of select passages from the literature studied in it.

1 From the late nineteenth century onwards, literary historiography has used concepts of 'anti-classicism' in order to articulate the intuition that different phenomena of opposition, parody and criticism of (explicit or implicit) standardisations of literary and artistic practice in the Italian Renaissance could be viewed together in a larger context (Borsellino 1973).

Initially, these observations focused on anti-Petrarchism, a term championed in particular by Arturo Graf in 1886 in his classical study, "Petrarchismo ed antipetrarchismo" (Graf 1886), published in two parts in one of the leading Italian journals of the day, Nuova Antologia. Rivista di scienze, lettere ed arti. This essay was then included in Graf's seminal book, Attraverso il Cinquecento (Graf 1888), published by Loescher, Turin, along with Graf's observations on "Un processo a Pietro Aretino", "I Pedanti", "Una cortigiana fra mille: Veronica Franco" and "Un buffone di Leone X".

Graf re-evaluates Petrarchism in the sense of a "malattia cronica della letteratura italiana" (Graf 1888, 3). The concept of anti-classicism plays no role in this; however, anti-Petrarchism is not restricted to the function of a mere opposite of Petrarchism, it is used in a far broader sense, which embraces many tendencies nowadays more commonly described as anti-classicist: "ma è più spesso semplice avversione alle dottrine, agl'intendimenti e alla pratica letteraria degli imitatori." (Graf 1888, 37). This is why Graf analyses numerous works which will be classified under the heading of explicit anti-classicism in the present book: Capitoli by Berni, Mauro and the Berneschi with their criticism of pedantismo, Michelangelo's Rime, the capitoli by Castaldi, the Priapea and the Petrarchista of Franco, Aretino's dialogues and the maccheronian poets. Graf consequently locates his umbrella term 'anti-Petrarchism' within a wide field of avversioni and contrasti. <sup>1</sup> In this context, he also deals in detail with the "spiritualizzatori di Petrarca" (Graf 1888, 67) and their "operazione dello spiritualizzare" (63).

As early as the late seventeenth century, in the Istoria della volgar poesia by Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni (Rome 1698) and the accompanying Commentarij, different texts and genres are treated that can be assigned to anti-classicism. Only in the case of the so-called poesia famigliare e burlesca, exemplified by Berni's and the Berneschi's works, however, do we find observations that point to an implicit perception that these texts deviate from a classicist norm.

"Del resto, nelle tendenze molteplici e discordi della letteratura contemporanea il petrarchismo incontrava altre avversioni ed altri contrasti. Anzi tutto non potevano essere fautori suoi quegli umanisti intolleranti ed intransigenti che non avevano in pregio se non le opere dei greci e dei latini, e stimavano cosa vile l'usare scrivendo altra lingua che quella di Cicerone e di Virgilio" (Graf 1888, 49).

In literary histories of the period up to 1888, poesia bernesca remains the most frequently treated variety of anti-classicist text types. However, this genre is generally insufficiently distinguished from satire or poesia maccheronica (Maffei 1858; Cantù 1865). In literary histories written after 1889, anti-classical phenomena (still rarely explicitly described as such until about 1940) are all caught up and swept along together, subsumed under the term 'anti-Petrarchism', the phenomenon of which is perceived – probably following Graf – to be a kind of 'natural' reaction to pedantic forms of Petrarchism.

During the early phase of research in this field, however, the notion that these heterogeneous phenomena could be compared with or connected to one another, was primarily an effect of an underestimation of the role of diversity and plurality in the Renaissance. This sometimes led to unconsidered or even undue conflation, for example of anti-Petrarchism and other tendencies that ran counter to forms of 'classicism' (Graf 1888; Battisti 1962) or to the mixing up of poetological with socio-historical categories (Petronio 1992; critically, Friede 2012/13). In particular, some scholars lost sight not only of the fact that the objectives of such opposing gestures are often hardly comparable (critically, Schulz-Buschhaus 1975), but also that the connections or analogies between the various normative systems that 'anti-classicists' seem to attack are by no means self-evident; 'classicist' norms can even be partly incompatible with one another (Petrarchism vs. Aristotelianism; Huss et al. 2012).

In a second phase of research – one conducted since roughly the mid-1990s – the coexistence, within the Renaissance, of fundamentally different literary options was either affirmed and studied as a hitherto neglected side of the Renaissance (Corsaro 1999; Procaccioli 1999a; Corsaro et al. 2007), or even declared as the basic epistemic fact of the early modern period as such. Thus, 'plurality' (Hempfer 1993b; Hempfer 2010a; Kablitz/Regn 2006) or 'pluralisation' (Nelting 2007; Müller et al. 2010) was taken to be the very signature of the epoch: where the multiplicity of (potentially incompatible) authorities does not merely exist or grow, but is reflected or acted upon (be it by discussing it, dramatizing it or seeking to control or to reduce it), a specific difference between the early modern episteme and that of the Middle Ages can be discerned. The publications of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre "Pluralisierung & Autorität" (https://www.sfb-frueheneuzeit.uni-muenchen.de) at the LMU Munich University illustrate this process in a variety of ways and regarding different social as well as intellectual spheres.

If it is true, following this analysis, that in the early modern period norms such as the rules of poetics are experienced and evaluated precisely as elements of such a plurality, both the unifying singular term 'classicism' and its counterpart 'anti-classicism' will appear anachronistic or inappropriate. Both sides of the opposition will have to be 'pluralized.'

On the other hand, the concept of 'pluralisation' itself falls short of the intuition of earlier anti-classicism research in that it tends to level out the antinomies and hierarchies between model and counter model, original and parody, etc., which characterise this field, and their possible interrelationships. It makes them disappear in a homogeneous field of manifold possibilities.

Consequently, this book will describe anti-classicisms and their classicist counterparts in the plural, while maintaining the binary relationships between them.

2 Investigating anti-classicist phenomena presupposes an effort to establish a concept of classicism. It should be noted in advance that in the case of the Italian early modern period, neither of these two terms, classicism and anticlassicism, occurs on the level of the historical objects to be studied. Both are modern day analytic terms designed to map the historical phenomena, although related or contiguous expressions such as petrarchista, ciceronianus or aristotelico are historically verifiable (Quondam 2013, 65–86). The pair of heuristic concepts used here thus stands in a determinable semantic relationship with terms used in the sixteenth century.

Poetics and aesthetics to which we will assign the term 'classicism' base their normativity on a systematically affirmative reference to the past, which is taken as a model. The canonization of a 'classical' epoch is to be understood as an act of authorisation, which can be explicit or implicit and must be (at least partially) accepted in the literary system in order to be valid.

Classicism is related to, but distinct from, the classical. The latter is a status of canonisation attributed to works, classes of works or epochs within the literary or artistic system. The former results from an effort to attain this status by orienting oneself towards models that are themselves considered classical. Classicist orientation in this sense tends to stabilise the classical model itself (Mazzacurati 1967; Bonora 1988; Voßkamp 1993). Yet a classicist endeavour understood in this way is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the actual attainment of classical status. Moreover, such a status can also be lost over time and thus, paradoxically, classical art or literature has a time index (Föcking/Schindler 2020, 9–13).

The expression used above, "systematically affirmative reference to the past" implies that classicism is not an isolated, unsystematic act of imitation, but aims at a whole. Anti-classicisms can be all forms of counter-tendencies, systematic objections or subversions of such classicisms, and between these (as will be shown) the question of a potentially systematic whole or at any rate of possible larger contexts, synergies and alliances arises in a special way.

3 As for the specific version of classicism found in the Renaissance, it will be helpful to add a limiting condition to the definition outlined in 2: Renaissance classicism presents itself as the restoration of something that has been lost; it presupposes a break in continuity.

Affirmative reference to an unbroken tradition or the continuation of a form of discourse that has had a steady effect from the past into the present are therefore not to be considered classicism in the sense outlined here. The flowering of the romanzo in the Renaissance, for example, will not be understood as an example of classicism in relation to the late Middle Ages in this book, and consequently parodic tendencies within the chivalric romance will not be presented as anti-classicist either (at least not in relation to the genre of the chivalric romance itself).

Rather, it is crucial for the concepts of classicism and anti-classicism used in these pages that the respective contemporary endeavour reacts to an experience of rupture or discontinuity: the 'classic' is no longer available to the present; classicist poetics in this sense restores lost ideals after a period of – perceived – decay.

For this restorative gesture, however, the Italian (and later the French) Renaissance resorted to lost classical models of more than one past: it referred on the one hand (as, for example, during the eighteenth century) to classical antiquity, for example in the effort to write tragedies or epics according to the rules found (or taken to be contained) in Aristotle's Poetics. On the other hand, especially in Bembism, the idea of a revival of ancient perfection is transferred and extended to the relationship between the sixteenth century and the Italian Trecento, especially Petrarch and Boccaccio (Müller 2007; Mehltretter 2007; Regn 2020).

In this way, the models of classical antiquity are joined by a kind of 'second antiquity', and this raises two problems: one of them is the possible interference between being a model and following a model. Bembo's two model authors, Petrarch and Boccaccio, are, at the same time, models ('classics') in their own right and yet also – to varying degrees – themselves 'classicists' in relation to classical antiquity. In Boccaccio's case, this mainly concerns the prose style of the otherwise partly medieval, partly 'modern' (or innovative) genre of the novella (Branca 1981; Küpper 1993). In Petrarch's case, we find a much stronger, actively produced reference to antiquity on various levels, for example to Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Latin elegy (e.g. Föcking 2000). In these two model authors, then, the overlapping of the status of an acknowledged classic and their own activity of methodically pursuing 'classicism' creates a certain ambivalence.

The second problem raised by this situation is one of competition: these two vernacular model authors and the discursive traditions and poetics that emanate from them (and which join forces with the rhetorical-Horatian tradition) will, at a certain historical moment, have to compete with yet another set of classical norms; at the moment of the rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics these implicit traditions will contend with a theoretical edifice understood to be explicitly normative: poetological Aristotelianism.

This kind of classicism, then, is of a plural nature and full of tensions, yet dialogical and constantly dynamic: for example, in the theory of the lyric between Petrarchism, the succession of Horace and Aristotelianism (cf. Regn 2004; Huss et al. 2012), or in the pluralisation of a lyrical practice which oscillates between Petrarchism, the classical ode and the poetry of the psalms (Penzenstadler 1993), or even attempts to follow all available models at the same time. Thus, Girolamo Muzio Iustinopolitano's Rime diverse (1551) combine a dominantly Petrarchist style with a macrotextual structure based on the works of Horace; Laura Battiferri's Salmi penizenziali (1564; Battiferri 2005) and Gabriele Fiamma's Psalm rewritings render the Psalms using a Petrarchan lexicon as a matter of course (Ubaldini 2012).

Therefore, in addition to antiquity, other models (such as the Bible or Petrarch) must be taken into account (Procaccioli 1999a). The structure of such 'classicisms' (in the plural), with their hierarchies, their competition or overlap, their different reference options and sectorial limitations, is far more dynamic than the talk of a monolithic 'Renaissance classicism' would suggest. It is the manifold 'positive' corresponding to the 'negative' of sixteenth-century anticlassicisms, which are the subject of this volume.

For their part, these anti-classicisms are just as plural as their correlates, whether they be explicit or implicit counter-movements to the formation of classicist norms. They are as dynamic as the norms themselves, they reconstruct their hierarchies, but they can also team up with initiatives to establish new rules and patterns, new order against the plurality of competing normative systems.

This decidedly plural dynamic was subject to further thrusts in the course of the sixteenth century, when the proliferation of reference texts revealed that even antiquity itself was characterized by an inherently plural corpus of norms, a situation in which arguments could be made, for example, using Horace against Aristotle, Quintilian against Longinus (Huss 2011/12) or Vitruvius against Horace (Friede 2015). Renaissance classicism thus aims at order, but generates plurality by this very process.

Reactions to pluralisation range from attempts at harmonisation to sectoral separation, from indifference to the various claims to absolutizing one of the options (Weinberg 1961; Hathaway 1962; Regn 1987b). Numerous measures designed to cope with plurality aim at the production of uniform sets of norms, for example for the various literary genres, but also in contemporary philosophical thought, in the widespread hope that truth can be established through the harmonisation of opposites (between Plato and Aristotle, for instance).

In this context, a distinction can be made between standardisation efforts on a superordinate level (the transgeneric binding force of the res-verba model or attempts at a comprehensive poetics of mimesis) and a generic level, on which genre-specific reorientations to ancient genres can be discerned (dialogue, comedy, tragedy, elegy, eclogue, but also the transformation of medieval genres such as the late medieval romance and the novella on the basis of the models provided by antiquity). Here, classicist standardisations can have a pluralising effect by splitting the act of referring to models into sectors for the various genres: what is 'classicist' in the subservience to the poetics of the elegy may not be compatible with the development of a love interest in an epic.

In addition, there are genres that remain largely untouched by the formation of classical norms (Canti carnascialeschi, Sacre rappresentazioni, Laude, Capitoli), but are nevertheless partly cultivated by authors whose works can otherwise be associated with classical or Petrarchist tendencies (e.g. in the case of Bembo or Poliziano).

In lyric poetry, for example, the range of possibilities for individual authors to relate to models extends from exhibited conformity (Bembo's Petrarchism) to fundamentally system-conforming, but at the same time exhibiting individual variation (Gaspara Stampa), to skirting the margins or even partly breaking up a given system (Berardino Rota, Michelangelo), or to overstretching the system for the purpose of saving it, the action of which nevertheless endangers said system (Torquato Tasso, Ludovico Paterno, Luigi Groto). The latter two variations, which would then become typical of the second half of the century, have also been called 'mannerism' (Regn 1991b; Quondam 2013; Huss/Wehr 2014). In these transformations, the historical dynamics of Cinquecento classicism become tangible: this brand of poetics becomes extinct around 1600 due to the new kind of baroque rule-breaking that took place during that period.

4 Anti-classicist counterpoints to the individual components of this tangle of voices themselves naturally contribute to effects of pluralisation, and indeed multiply them, insofar as there can be multiple reactions to each element of a plural situation.

Negations of the principle of imitatio, for example, can be global (as in Giordano Bruno; Mehltretter 2003) or sectorial (as in Niccolò Franco's critique of Petrarchism; Mehltretter 2011) or even merely gradual (as in the tempering of a onesided reference to Petrarch). A decision in favour of one of the components of a plural situation to the detriment of another can constitute an opposition to the latter: both a kind of anti-Petrarchist Aristotelianism and an anti-Aristotelian Petrarchism (as in Girolamo Muzio Iustinopolitano) can be found in the contemporary repertoire. In the Priapees, moreover, there exists the special case of the counter-discursivity of an entire genre (Oster 2012/13). Giovan Giorgio Trissino's particular position seems to include – theoretically as well as practically – something like an anti-Bembist classicism with a strong reference to antiquity on the level of the individual genres, but without an overarching poetics of mimesis.

Many counter-designs are directed at individual aspects (such as Antonio Brocardo's counter-position to Bembo's norms or Vittoria Colonna's and Michelangelo's re-orientation of the poetics of lyric poetry in the direction of prayer and meditation), others – such as the decision for a poetics of Platonic furor against an Aristotelian poetics of mimesis or against the tradition of imitatio (Patrizi; see Hennig 2016; Luca Contile) – imply larger scale decisions.

This field also includes forms of anti-classicism based on religious norms: spiritual poetry and spiritual theatre polemicise against the Petrarchist discourse of secular love as well as against Aristotelianism, from the higher standpoint of their spirituality. Not only are the secular themes, which are associated with genres such as love poetry, condemned in these texts (as in Fiamma's Rime spirituali), but the secular poetological norms themselves are problematized as obstacles to a truly spiritual message (as in Giovan Battista di Lega's criticism of "I Greci" in his tragedy on the crucifixion (di Lega 1549).

In some cases, this move is only partially realised, for example in the case of the clerics Girolamo Malipiero and Gabriele Fiamma, who do make an effort to correspond to Petrarch's linguistic and stylistic norm, even though they change the ideological basis of their lyric endeavour completely: their sacred poetry is thus simultaneously classicist and anti-classicist. Similarly, criticisms of Aristotle's Poetics by authors of sacred tragedies rarely generate iconoclastic anti- or a-classicist texts, but, rather, strategies to integrate elements of a classicist poetics of tragedy into their system of Christian semantics.

Finally, alternative model authors can come into play and destabilise the system, as in the case of the Cinquecento discussion on Dante. In this context, an author like Dante can be proposed both as an alternative classic (i.e. as bearer of an alternative norm) and as a model for anti-classicist writing (Oberto 2015).

The protagonists of these counter-tendencies can be individuals, but also entire poetological schools, circles of friends such as the circle around Michelangelo, or academies: in its Rime Marittime di M. Nicolo Franco ed altri diversi spiriti dell'Accademia de gli Argonauti (1547), the Mantovan Accademia degli Argonauti combines Petrarchism as outlined by Bembo with an extensive use of astronomical and nautical themes and their technical lexicon, thus opposing Bembo's verdict against scientific materie in poetry. Contacts, correspondences and networks can generally play an important role here.

Furthermore, the question of the relationship between established exponents of a given culture and more marginal groups is always relevant. The book market, too, can – without any explicit theoretical endeavour behind it – either promote or undermine genre poetics, for example when the typical cycle structure of the lyric canzoniere with its implication of a narrative substrate is undermined (and possibly replaced by other structures) in the format of the lyric anthology (Quondam 1991a; Tomasi 2012).

Besides such mechanisms of softening poetic norms, there are also phenomena of 'indifference' such as Veronica Franco's a-Petrarchistic epistolary elegies or Bembo's stanzas.

Were one to describe these processes merely in terms of the dynamics of pluralisation, there would be a danger firstly of levelling out the specific hermeneutic relationships and antinomies between each classicist and anti-classicist move, the subversive tendencies, which are after all subversive of something in particular, the hierarchies of original and parody (which are to be assumed at least heuristically), in a historically distorting way.

Secondly, such a perspective tends to lose sight of the connections between the disparate phenomena that make up the field of anti-normative initiatives. For, on the one hand, the classicist tendencies of the sixteenth century are themselves subject to various measures of standardisation, harmonisation and systematisation. These are not only of a poetological, but also of a theological nature in the (Roman) Catholic reform that pervaded the entire Cinquecento from around 1520 onwards. The explosiveness of the early modern experience of pluralisation owes much to the persistence of postulates of unity in relation to truth and authority in this context (Kablitz 1999).

On the other hand, such connections can arise not just on the classicist side, there can also be alliances between various forms of anti-classicism. These connections and synergies have been investigated in a very rudimentary fashion in this volume and should be the object of future research. Particular attention should be paid to those opposing gestures that are directed against overarching designs and fantasies of unification, such as Bembo's position on the language question or a genre-overarching Aristotelianism. Folengo's demonstration of linguistic and stylistic multiplicity, for example, might not only be directed against Bembo's plea for Trecento Tuscan, but perhaps against the postulate of stylistic unity as such (Mehltretter 2010). Such large-scale attacks can be taken to constitute a kind of core of anti-classical efforts and are above all of interest with regard to the question of possible larger contexts in this field, to be explored by future researchers.

5 The rich variety of anti-classicist tendencies sketched above will be studied in this companion following the hypothesis that four main types of anti-classicism can be discerned:

5.1 Explicit anti-classicism. This is the most obvious, but also the most manifold type. Its explicitness consists either in direct references to an obverse poetics or in antiphrastic, parodic or otherwise distancing forms of intertextuality.

As to the corpus examined, the type labelled 'explicit anti-classicism' roughly corresponds to what is termed and analysed as 'anti-classicist' in literary histories. The two most important features of this type are a clear opposition to the poetry of Petrarch and the Petrarchists, and a distinct devaluation of classical as well as classicist model authors. Canonical texts in this regard include Castaldi's "Udite imitatori del Petrarca", some sonnets and capitoli by Francesco Berni, the Ragionamento by Pietro Aretino and Niccolò Franco's Il Petrarchista.

However, an extended, genre-based analysis of texts that clearly oppose the classicist écriture yields further differentiated criteria for this type, which are partly genre-specific, partly superordinate. In this way, genres such as the poesia fidenziana, the priapea, Aretino's Lettere and several text types that are assigned to the invective can also be identified as explicitly anti-classicist. An overall look at these texts shows that references to the burlesque poetry of the Trecento and Quattrocento, and to bucolic as well as to 'pedantic' poetry can also be considered characteristic of this type.

Explicitly anti-classicist poetry is characterised by the fact that gestures of opposition to Petrarchist model texts, as well as criticisms of real persons or political parties, very often remain within the realm of the non-serious or the virtual, without even potentially intending to establish alternative models.

Particular attention is paid in this chapter – also in response to the comparatively little scholarly consideration of this aspect – to explicitly anti-classicist references to ancient texts, authors or genres (such as the Roman love elegy). In addition, mutual references between single texts and text types within the corpus of explicit anti-classicism can be observed. These include references of the genre of capitoli poetry to that of satire, references of Priapic poetry to the Bernese capitoli, references in Niccolò Franco's Rime to the figure of Pietro Aretino and his works etc. Such allusions stabilise what could be a 'system' of explicitly anti-classicist writing from within.

5.2 Implicit anti-classicism. This term describes texts that do not declare or signal any fundamental opposition to or explicit devaluation of classicist norms and may not even be intended to transgress them; rather, they overstretch the boundaries of poetic norms (as in mannerism, see Quondam 1991b; Huss 2014) or corrode them by the introduction of incompatible elements proclaiming, however, rather than proving their compatibility. In this volume, the phenomena studied in this regard are the spiritual tragedy and the spiritual Petrarchism. Here the 'old' classicism of the revival of Greek and Roman tragedy and the discussions about Aristotelian drama poetics from the middle of the Cinquecento and the 'new' classicism of Petrarchist love poetry are combined with the new requirements of Christian themes in the age of catholic reform and counter-reformation. In contrast to the 'submission' of pagan norms to the Christian doctrine in late antiquity, the Chresis (cf. Gnilka 1984), authors of spiritual tragedies and spiritual poetry classify themselves as subordinate to secular poetics and practices of tragedy and Petrarchist poetry. Therefore, they programmatically do not choose the still available, but 'outmoded' sacra rappresentazione or the lauda, but intend the Christian conversion of the pagan-secular, classicist models without abandoning their classicist pretensions. They are not concerned with anti-Aristotelianism or anti-Petrarchianism, but with a 'better', ideologically impeccable Aristotle and Petrarch. However, in order to achieve an "Aristotele christiano" (Angelo Grillo) in Christian drama or a "Petrarca theologo e spirituale" (Francesco Malipiero) in poetry, creative theoretical-poetological, as well as textual-practical efforts, are required that do not leave the initial model undamaged. Paradoxically, classicist intentions here lead to anti-classical results of varying degrees.

5.3 Alternative classicism. The choice of an alternative model such as Dante not only 'pluralises' the field of norms and standards in poetry, it allows for both opposition and innovation. Deviating from dominant classicist allegiances like Petrarchism, some of the authors studied here contributed to an alternative 'Dantesque' tradition, especially of a religious, and in some cases more specifically Savonarolian, type. In the second half of the sixteenth century, two partly new ways of looking upon Dante as different from the mainstream emerged, which opened up a field of possibilities: the debate on Dante as a 'phantastic' author on the one hand and, on the other, a new way of appreciating Dante's poetic 'harshness' in literary theory, poetic practice, the fine arts and music.

5.4 Para-classicism. When using this term we are referring to forms of hybridisation or mixture of classicist and non-classicist elements, or between mutually heterogeneous classicist models. For this mixture, the work of Benvenuto Cellini is analysed as an example, from which excursions are made into similarly situated authors and texts in the Cinquecento. Cellini is paradigmatic for paraclassicism because he hybridises different arts and art processes. His Rime, his Vita and his treatises on art oscillate between factual and fictional narration. On the one hand, they seek to connect with classical models, but on the other hand, they ostentatiously cultivate a conspicuous anti-classicism that builds on shock effects of an 'aesthetics of the ugly' or the counter-discursive. Cellini and other authors react to a massively transforming cultural landscape that can only be met to a limited extent with the traditional classical paradigms. Cellini's emphasis on self-reference is not least the result of an anti-classical texture that contaminates the most diverse genres. Cellini, who feels excluded from the 'classical classicism' of his contemporaries, opposes what he sees as unfair treatment with 'a different classicism'.

Each of the following chapters has been directed by one of the four authors, working with their various teams. The four main authors also wrote the greater part of the texts; the parts written by other members of the respective teams are marked in brackets after their titles. This book would not have been possible without the generous funding of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung. The authors wish to thank both institutions for their support.

Finally, we should like to express our warmest thanks to the members of the four teams, Aina Sandrini, Daniel Fliege, Avi Liberman, Carolina Pini, Sascha Resch, Matteo Cazzato, Giulia Lombardi, Laura Umlauf, Antonio Mariani and the supporting staff at our universities. A special thank you goes to Nicky Beaven for revising and proofreading the English texts in this companion.

### Susanne A. Friede, Aina Sandrini (with Avi Liberman) 1 Explicit Anti-classicism

Phenomenologically, what we term explicit anti-classicism corresponds most closely to what is commonly understood in literary history as the anti-classicist literature of the Cinquecento. As a rule, two features in particular are to be regarded as constitutive for it: a) a clearly discernible opposition to Petrarchan and Petrarchist poetry as, for instance, in Cornelio Castaldi's Udite imitatori del Petrarca (see also chap. 1.7), and b) a reference to models other than the canonised classical authors, or even a devaluation of classical models, the latter of which can be observed with regard to both the ancient classics and the Italian model authors of the Trecento. The following investigation of explicitly anticlassicist texts and text corpora shows, however, that in addition to these generally accepted constitutive characteristics (which need to be relativised in part), there are further distinguishing features, which can be seen as typical, but do not necessarily have to be present in every explicitly anti-classicist text.

Generally speaking, it can be observed that the various characteristics of explicit anti-classicism emerge primarily through the description and analysis of different text genres and subgenres, rather than single texts. The present chapter is, therefore, oriented towards such genres and text types. On the one hand, these have evolved historically and are already available as genre concepts in the Cinquecento itself, such as the Bernesque capitoli. On the other hand, we have heuristically identified certain genres and text types from a modern vantage point as coherent corpora containing specific anti-classicist features, such as the invective.

In addition to an introductory outline of the context in which the respective text type or genre originated, each of the following subchapters presents the history of texts and editions as well as research trends relevant to explicit anticlassicism. This is followed by an analysis section, which discusses central phenomena by way of examples and illustrates them, where the limited scope of the chapter permits, by quotations from the primary text. The conclusions formed at the end in each case highlight the relevant features that make the phenomena explicitly anti-classicist in nature, as well as contributing directly to an adequate description of the respective text type or genre.

### 1.1 Berni's sonnets

#### 1.1.1 Origins

While the burlesque sonnet was still a central form of comic poetry in the Trecento and the Quattrocento, it was marginalised in the Cinquecento by the Bernesque capitolo. Francesco Berni did not only help the latter form to spread, but he also emerged as a writer of burlesque sonnets. In this genre, Berni took themes and motifs from the comic sonnet production of previous centuries and partially related them to Cinquecento lyric genres such as Petrarchism.

Both the formal and the thematic differences between Berni's capitoli and his sonnets are reflected in the genesis of the texts, for the two forms initially appeared separately. While Berni had emerged as an author of capitoli between 1518 and 1523, he devoted himself almost exclusively to writing sonnets in the 1520s. In his last creative phase before his death in 1535, he was finally active in both genres concurrently (Longhi 1976). The partial return to the form of the capitolo was likely also influenced by his contact with the Accademia della Vigna active in Rome (cf. chap. 1.2) whose members had made Berni's capitoli the model for their own terzina poetry. Berni's formative effect on other writers, however, remained limited to the form of the capitolo, and therefore the sonnet was increasingly marginalised in the production of other poeti berneschi (Romei 1984, 66–67).

#### 1.1.2 Text and edition history

Francesco Berni's sonnets were initially published simultaneously with collections of his capitoli, but in separate editions containing only poems of this form. This suggests an editorial practice that took into account the formal, but also thematic differences between Berni's sonnets and his capitoli. The first collection of Berni's sonnets was published in 1537 – two years after his death – in Ferrara by Scipione et fratelli. Three years later, Curzio Troiano Navò in Venice also published a sonnet anthology with additional poems.

This formal differentiation was abandoned only in the two-volume Opere burlesche, published by Giunti in Florence in 1548 and 1555. The first of these two volumes, edited by Antonfrancesco Grazzini, opens with a section devoted to Francesco Berni, containing first the capitoli and then the sonnets, as well as other poetic forms. This arrangement reflects changes in the perception of Berni's poems since the publication of the first editions. The fundamental differences between Berni's sonnets and his capitoli were clearly now of less importance than the intention of providing a comprehensive overview of his burlesque oeuvre. Moreover, the capitoli have a more prominent position in the arrangement of the texts than the sonnets. The codification of the genre of Bernesque lyric poetry promoted by Berni's successors had marginalised the form of the sonnet so that the burlesque capitolo asserted itself as the paradigmatic form of this genre.

The underlying objective of the Giunti edition is further evident in the dedicatory letter and two of the introductory sonnets that Antonfrancesco Grazzini placed at the beginning of the first volume he edited. These texts emphasise Berni's Florentine background, elevating him to the status of "maestro e padre del burlesco stile" (Berni et al. 1548, n.p., v. 8). The Accademia degli Umidi, which was active in Florence and to which Lasca also belonged, appears here as the continuator of the "stil burlesco" established by Berni (iir). The latter is polemically contrasted with the "Petrarcherie" and "Bemberie" and thus presented from an anti-Petrarchist perspective (iiv). Lasca's perspective is geared towards an attempt to reclaim Francesco Berni and his character for Florence after Bernesque poetry had been received and disseminated mainly in Rome (Romei 2012, 275–276). The anti-Petrarchism attested to Bernesque poetry in this edition earned Francesco Berni a "Ruf des Anti-Petrarca und Anti-Bembo" (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 287), which shaped the reception of his texts from the late Cinquecento onwards. Berni's texts themselves, however, only partially support this reputation; moreover, anti-Petrarchist elements appear precisely in the form of the sonnet, which is accorded less importance in the Opere burlesche than the capitolo.

Modern editions of Francesco Berni's poetry such as the editions by Ezio Chiòrboli (Berni 1934), Danilo Romei (Berni 1985), Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti and Moreno Savoretti (Berni et al. 2014), arrange the poems chronologically. Only the anthology edited by Guglielmo Gorni, Massimo Danzi and Silvia Longhi (Berni 2001) separates Berni's sonnets from the capitoli, following the model of the first Cinquecento editions.

#### 1.1.3 Research

In recent scholarship, Berni's sonnets have generally been studied separately from his capitoli, indicating that the two forms are perceived as distinct genres. While some studies examine the distinction itself (Longhi 1983, 4–23; Schulz-Buschhaus 1993), in most cases it is implicitly assumed. In addition to the chronological and textual position of the sonnets within Berni's oeuvre (Longhi 1976; Bernardi 1988, 199–200), the relation of these poems to other textual traditions has been analysed, most notably the burlesque sonnets of the Trecento and Quattrocento.1 The interpretation of Berni's sonnets as satires is terminologically inaccurate (Schulz-Buschhaus 1975), but still holds up in isolated cases (for example, in Bettella 1998). A frequently studied aspect of Berni's sonnets is their parody of Petrarchist poetry, especially in the sonnet Chiome d'argento fino, irte e attorte. 2

#### 1.1.4 Analysis

Francesco Berni's burlesque sonnets cannot be traced back to a uniform type but are heterogeneous in terms of style and themes. Even though a complete classification cannot be provided here, some basic types must be mentioned. Some sonnets are based on themes and motifs taken from the burlesque poetry of the Trecento and Quattrocento, such as descriptions of decaying houses and buildings, polemics against incompetent doctors, as well as petitionary and companion sonnets for gifts and various objects. Others exhibit thematic proximity to Berni's capitoli, such as the poem Può far la Nostra Donna ch'ogni sera, which is a palinode of the eulogy on the game of cards formulated in the Capitolo della primiera. Others use features of the political invective or tenzone among poets (cf. chap. 1.6) or take the form of burlesque funeral poems.

Of particular interest in this context are the parodies of Petrarchist poetry to be found among Berni's sonnets.3 The sonnet is more suitable than any other metrical form for this kind of parody because the lack of genre distance from Petrarchism makes the parodic conciseness of the poems more prominent (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 283). Characteristic of Berni's parody of Petrarchan style is the so-called Sonetto alla sua donna, written around 1530 (Longhi 1976, 290):

Chiome d'argento fino, irte e attorte senz'arte intorno ad un bel viso d'oro; fronte crespa, u' mirando io mi scoloro, dove spunta i suoi strali Amor e Morte; occhi di perle vaghi, luci torte Da ogni obietto diseguale a loro; ciglie di neve, e quelle, ond'io m'accoro,

Longhi 1983, 19–22; Bernardi 1988; Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 315–331; Orvieto/Brestolini 2000, 219–238.

Schulz-Buschhaus 1975; Giampieri 1978; Toscan 1983; Schulz-Buschhaus 1993; Montanile 1996; Bettella 1998; Gigliucci 2010; Tonozzi 2015.

Occasionally, Berni's work also contains parodies of Petrarchist lyric poetry that make use of other meters, such as the ballad Amore, io te ne incaco, which parodies Petrarch's Amor quando fioria.

dita e man dolcemente grosse e corte; labra di latte, bocca ampia celeste; denti d'ebeno rari e pellegrini; inaudita ineffabile armonia; costumi alteri e gravi: a voi, divini servi d'Amor, palese fo che queste son le bellezze della donna mia. (Berni et al. 2014, 139–140)

The sonnet varies an old burlesque motif, the portrait of an ugly old woman. This already appears in the dolce stil novo or, for example, in Cecco Angiolieri as a comic replica of the images of unearthly beauty that are attributed to the beloved in love poetry.4 Berni aligns this motif to the common topoi of description of the beloved in Petrarchist poetry. His poem specifically parodies Pietro Bembo's sonnet Crin d'oro crespo e d'ambra tersa e pura (V) by combining the original components of the description in 'perverted' or wrong correlations. The resulting pastiche is, as Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus notes (1993, 330), a parody of imitation itself, through which not only the language and world view of high poetry is attacked, but also imitation as its essential literary procedure.

Berni's parodies of Petrarchism occur not only in sonnets of standard length, but also to some extent in his sonetti caudati, such as the so-called Sonetto delle puttane from around 1518 (Longhi 1976, 278–279):

Un dirmi ch'io gli presti e ch'io gli dia or la veste, or l'anello, or la catena, e, per averla conosciuta a pena, volermi tutta tôr la robba mia; un voler ch'io gli facci compagnia, che nell'inferno non è maggior pena, un dargli desinar, albergo e cena, come se l'uom facesse l'osteria; un sospetto crudel del mal franzese, un tôr danari o drappi ad interesso, per darli, verbigrazia, un tanto il mese; un dirmi ch'io vi torno troppo spesso; un'eccellenza del signor marchese, eterno onor del puttanesco sesso; un morbo, un puzzo, un cesso, un toglier a pigion ogni palazzo son le cagioni ch'io mi meni il cazzo. (Berni et al. 2014, 75–76)

See on this burlesque motif Hausmann 1975; Orvieto/Brestolini 2000, 214–238.

The triviality of the subject matter and the misogynistic impetus of the sonnet form a stark contrast "zur ideal-heroischen Welt petrarkistischer Liebeserklärung" (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 217). The sonnet enumerates the inconveniences of intercourse with women. The model for this enumeration scheme is adopted from high love poetry, namely from Bembo's sonnet Moderati desiri, immenso ardore (VI), in which the sufferings of the devoted lover are enumerated according to this pattern. Bembo's sonnet formed this schema into a particularly concise type of Petrarchist poetry, which was often imitated (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 317–321). In addition to its formal adaptation to this schema, Berni's sonnet also parodies the model in thematic terms. In Bembo's poem, the sufferings of the lover are due to the absence of the beloved, but have an ennobling effect on the former. In Berni's sonnet, the lover suffers precisely because of the beloved's overly physical proximity. Because of that, he gratifies himself "in trivial handgreiflicher Weise selber, indem er misogyn Liebe wie Geliebte überhaupt im Stich läßt" (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 322). Berni's sonnet thus continues an anti-heroic conception of love that appeared earlier in the sonetti caudati of the burlesque tradition of the Quattrocento. While in this tradition, for example in Burchiello's work, the authors of classical antiquity appeared as the counterpart, to whom the 'false', mythical image of Cupid was attributed, in Berni's work this role is assigned to Bembist lyric poetry (322–323).

#### 1.1.5 Conclusions

Francesco Berni's sonnets draw heavily on the burlesque lyricism of the Trecento and Quattrocento. In some sonnets, themes and motifs from this tradition are combined with a parody of Petrarchist-Bembist poetry. The sonnet proves to be a particularly suitable form for this kind of parody because its formal proximity to Petrarchism makes the comic distortion especially salient. Linguistic and thematic obscenity serve as a central means of parody. The object of parody is not only the language, themes, and motifs of Petrarchist poetry, but also imitation itself as a constitutive procedure of this genre.

### 1.2 Bernesque capitoli

#### 1.2.1 Origins

The burlesque capitolo was the most widely received form of Bernesque poetry, even after Francesco Berni's death. While Francesco Berni wrote capitoli primarily in the 1520s, a circle of lyric poets (the so-called vignaiuoli) active in Rome in the 1530s, who received the forms established by Berni, codified them into a genre and in some cases developed them further, was decisive for their dissemination. Among the lyricists who belonged to this group were Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano, Francesco Maria Molza, Agnolo Firenzuola and Mattio Franzesi.

Both basic types of the Bernesque capitolo, the paradoxical encomium and the epistolary capitolo, appear in Francesco Berni's work. The so-called capitoli di lode are poems in praise of fruit, everyday objects or other inanimate things (e.g. peaches, eels, chamber pots), as well as of diseases and other calamities (such as Berni's famous chapters on the plague). Their counterpart is the capitoli contro, invective poems on specific objects or courtly manners (such as Mattio Franzesi's capitolo Contra il parlare per Vostra Signoria). In both cases, the capitoli are characterised by the use of sexual metaphors and codified language, which add an obscene level of meaning to the praise or vituperation.

The Lettere in capitoli<sup>5</sup> are addressed to direct recipients, mostly named in the text, and imitate the style of epistolary correspondence in the opening and closing formulas. Many of these capitoli are narrative, as illustrated, for example, by the numerous descriptions of hardscrabble journeys.<sup>6</sup>

Francesco Berni played a formative role in the development and dissemination of burlesque capitoli in the Cinquecento. With a series of paradoxical encomiums produced around 1521–1522 (Capitolo dell'anguille, Capitolo delle pesche, Capitolo dell'orinale), Berni established the form of the paradoxical encomium as it was taken up a decade later by other Bernesque authors. Around 1527–1528, the form of the epistolary capitolo also appeared in Berni's terzina poetry, which also found favour with his successors (Longhi 1983, 251–267).

Although Berni left Rome towards the end of the 1520s to follow his employer Giovanni Matteo Giberti to the Veneto, the development of the Bernesque capitolo7 remained strongly tied to Rome in the following decades. Presumably at the beginning of the 1530s, a group of burlesque lyricists emerged here in the circle of the Mantovan Uberto Strozzi, for whom the historically unconfirmed designation Accademia della Vigna or Accademia dei Vignaiuoli has become widespread in research.8

The designation comes from Berni's letter to Blosio Palladio dated December 31, 1534 (cf. Berni et al. 2014, 508).

This common motif is also prevalent in the French burlesque and satirical tradition (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 289).

Bàrberi Squarotti/Savoretti in Berni et al. 2014, 53–54.

This designation is based on an academy under this name mentioned in Anton Francesco Doni's Libraria and Mondi. It now seems questionable whether this was the group of poeti berneschi active in Rome (Romei 1984, 53–57).

There is evidence that the group existed between the years 1532 and 1535, probably until at least 1537 (Romei 1984, 55). It was likely a loosely programmed group that met regularly rather than an institutionalised academy. The association consisted of authors, most of whom were in the service of ecclesiastical dignitaries or were clerics themselves, such as Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano, Giovanni Della Casa, Giovanni Francesco Bini, Francesco Maria Molza, Agnolo Firenzuola and Mattio Franzesi (Romei 1984, 52–58). Most of the members did not only use the comic genre, but at the same time emerged also as writers of serious poetry (75). In the realm of Bernesque capitoli, these authors used the central characteristics of Francesco Berni's terzina poems and codified them into a genre based on replicable textual features. The preference given to the capitolo greatly marginalised the burlesque sonnet, which occupied a position equal to the capitolo in Berni's own texts. This choice also excluded political satire from the thematic repertoire of Bernesque lyricists, which in Italian lyric poetry of the Cinquecento appeared primarily in sonnet form – consider, for example, the pasquinades but also some of Berni's sonnets (Romei 1984, 67–68).

Francesco Berni's contact with this group was limited to correspondence with individual members and short stays in Rome in 1533 and 1534 (Romei 1984, 55). Nevertheless, the capitoli produced in the group's environment also influenced Berni's writing. Thus, in 1532, after a period of exclusive sonnet production, Berni returned to writing capitoli, thematically referring to the terzina poetry of his successors. One example of this are his Capitoli della peste, the contents of which are linked to Francesco Bini's Capitolo del mal franzese (67).

However, in other centres of Italy, especially in Venice, the form of the Bernesque capitolo only spread after anthologies of poems in this genre were first printed between 1537 and 1539 (Romei 1984, 65–66). Bernesque capitoli by Pietro Aretino, Lodovico Dolce, and Francesco Sansovino, who were active in Venice at the time, appeared in a collection in 1540 (Longhi 1983, 54–56).

In the final decades of the sixteenth century, the production of Bernesque lyric poetry was concentrated in Northern Italy, especially in the Venetian area of influence, Lombardy and Emilia. Bernesque lyricists of the late Cinquecento include Giulio Padovano, the Accademico Confuso, the Accademico Sviluppato, and Tommaso Garzoni.9 Of some of these authors, only their pseudonym adopted within literary academies survives, indicating the importance of such associations for the development of the Bernesque capitolo in the late Cinquecento. The forms and themes used in this phase are limited to the schematic repetition of patterns that had already become constitutive of the genre around the middle of

Romei 1998 (12–13) contains a comprehensive list of Bernesque authors of this period.

the sixteenth century. Compared with earlier capitoli, obscene allusions clearly lost their relevance due to Counter-Reformation repression (Romei 1998, 8–17).

As early as the first half of the Cinquecento, burlesque commentaries were produced, which parodied humanist textual exegesis, especially interpretations of Petrarch. Francesco Berni himself provided a model for this with the Comento al capitolo della Primiera, published in 1526, in which the fictitious author Messer Pietropaulo da San Chirico comments on Berni's capitolo featured in the title. Burlesque commentaries gained wider circulation in connection with the Accademia della Virtù, which existed in Rome10 in the 1530s and 1540s and included Bernesque authors such as Caro, Bini, and Franzesi (Longhi 1983, 46–47). It was in this environment, for example, that Annibal Caro's Commento di ser Agresto da Ficaruolo sopra la prima ficata del padre Siceo (1538) on Francesco Maria Molza's Capitolo in lode de' fichi was produced. Other burlesque commentaries mainly originated from Florence, where Antonfrancesco Grazzini11 and an author only known as Grappa,12 among others, excelled in this genre (Procaccioli 2002, 11).

#### 1.2.2 Text and edition history

Over the course of the Cinquecento, numerous editions of Bernesque capitoli appeared, predominantly in the form of anthologies with texts by various authors. The present account concentrates on the first editions of the individual editions, without considering the – in some cases numerous – reissues.13

The first collections of burlesque capitoli by multiple authors appeared between 1537 and 1539, when the poems of Francesco Berni and some berneschi, likely to have initially circulated in manuscript form, were printed. The four anthologies published by Curzio Troiano Navò during this period represent the canonisation and hierarchisation of individual authors that took place at this time. The first of these anthologies (Mauro d'Arcano/Berni 1537) names only Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano and Francesco Berni in its title, with the former preceding Berni in both the title and arrangement of capitoli. In the same year, however, Navò published a second edition of the anthology (Berni/Mauro

Cf. Cosentino 2002, 180–182.

Cf. for instance Lezione di maestro Niccodemo dalla Pietra al Migliaio sopra il capitolo della salsiccia.

Cf. e.g. Il Commento del Grappa sopra la canzone in lode della salsiccia and Cicalamenti del Grappa intorno al sonetto "Poi che mia speme è lunga a venir troppo".

Information on the reissues of individual editions of Bernesque capitoli is given in the section "Appendice I" in Longhi 1983 (247–250).

d'Arcano 1537) in which this order was reversed. Navò's 1538 edition reflects an expansion of the canon of anthologised texts, which was probably made possible by access to additional sources. In separate sections, the collection includes capitoli by Berni and Mauro d'Arcano, as well as burlesque terzina poems by Giovanni Della Casa, Giovanni Francesco Bini, and Angelo Bronzino. In the third Navò edition of 1539, additional texts by Giovanni Maria Molza and Benedetto Varchi, as well as lesser-known names such as Alessandro Sansedoni, Bartolomeo Carli, and Mario Confuso, are added. In 1540, a collection of capitoli by Pietro Aretino, Lodovico Dolce, and Francesco Sansovino was produced, testifying to an increased interest in the Bernesque capitolo in Venice, which probably emerged as a result of the publication of the Navò editions.

A strong influence on the later reception of Bernesque poetry was Il primo and Il secondo libro Dell'Opere burlesche, published by Giunti in Florence in 1548 and 1555 (cf. chap. 1.1). While the titles of earlier anthologies focus primarily on the names of the authors or the capitolo form, the designation opere burlesche of the collected texts, which appears in the Giunti editions, suggests their perception as an individual genre (Longhi 1983, 25).

In addition to the anthologies of Bernesque poetry mentioned thus far, editions of capitoli by individual authors also appeared in the Cinquecento, which were, however, less visible than the anthologies because of their more marginal distribution. Francesco Berni's Capitolo del Gioco della Primiera is the only poem published by Calvo in Rome during his lifetime, in 1526. In this edition, the text is accompanied by a burlesque prose commentary by Berni on the capitolo, which also served as a model for later texts of this kind. As early as 1537, Agostino Bindoni published Quinto Gherardo's Terze rime piacevoli, the first collection of capitoli by an author who belonged to neither Florentine nor Roman circles (Romei 2012, 273). Agnolo Firenzuola's Rime, published in Florence in 1549, contains some Bernesque capitoli in addition to poems of other genres. The Capitolo delle lodi del fuso by Girolamo Ruscelli was published in Venice in 1554 as a single-text edition. On the whole, editions of capitoli by individual authors in this period were a rather isolated phenomenon and often of only small textual volume.

Around the middle of the Cinquecento, publications with poems by individual authors also appeared, containing both satirical poetry and burlesque capitoli. Ercole Bentivoglio's Satire et altre rime piacevoli (1546), Pietro Nelli's Satire alla carlona (1546–1548), Gabriele Simeoni's Satire alla berniesca (1549), Giovanni Agostino Caccia's Satire et capitoli piacevoli (1549) and Cesare Caporali's Piacevoli rime (1585), all of which appeared in numerous editions, fall into this category.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, a decrease in the number of editions of Bernesque poetry can be observed. The reason for this was most likely the censorship to which this type of poetry was subjected in an increasingly repressive climate marked by the Counter-Reformation.<sup>14</sup> Collections from this period include Giovanni Francesco Ferrari's Rime burlesche (1570), the anthology Raccolto d'alcune piacevoli rime (1582) and the Rime piacevoli di Cesare Caporali, del Mauro, et d'altri auttori (1586). The frequent designation of these collections as piacevoli already points to the emerging deviation at this time from the constitutive features of the genre that had characterised the Bernesque capitoli until the middle of the century (Romei 1998, 8).

In the field of modern critical editions, there are, on the one hand, anthologies of Bernesque texts by various authors and, on the other, editions of texts by individual authors that contain – at least in part – Bernesque poems. Poeti del Cinquecento, edited in 2001 by Guglielmo Gorni, Massimo Danzi and Silvia Longhi, is an example of an anthology containing Bernesque texts. A more recent collection of Bernesque poems by various authors is offered by Opere di Francesco Berni e dei berneschi, edited in 2014 by Giorgio Barberi Squarotti and Moreno Savoretti.

Of the editions dedicated to individual authors, only Francesco Berni's texts have an extensive editorial history. In addition to the much-cited edition by Ezio Chiòrboli (1934), more recent editions by Danilo Romei (1985) and Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti (1991) should also be mentioned. For other Bernesque authors of the Cinquecento, the number of editions is minimal. Examples of modern editions of Bernesque texts include Giovanni Francesco Bini (2017), Francesco Coppetta dei Beccuti (Guidiccioni/Beccuti 1912, 279–311), Agnolo Bronzino (1998), Agnolo Firenzuola (1977), Antonfrancesco Grazzini, called Il Lasca (1974), Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano (2016), and Francesco Maria Molza (1999).15

#### 1.2.3 Research

Bernesque lyric poetry is one of the comic genres of the Cinquecento that has been most thoroughly studied in recent scholarship. While for a long period of time interest was limited primarily to Francesco Berni's poems, from the 1980s onwards, indeed perhaps earlier, efforts began to emerge, alongside studies of

The index of 1559 forbade, among other things, the publication of the works of Berni, Della Casa, and Aretino. The index of 1564 lifted the ban on Berni and Della Casa, but introduced a general prohibition against texts with obscene content. The indices of 1590 and 1593 again explicitly referred to Berni's works (Romei 1998, 7; Romei 2012, 280).

The edition of the Molza poems, however, contains only three capitoli (de' fichi, dell'insalata, della scomunica) and does not use the methodology of textual criticism.

individual Bernesque authors or texts, to explore Bernesque lyric poetry as a genre.

In the field of Francesco Berni's capitoli, besides the chronology of his work (Longhi 1976) and its linguistic-stylistic aspects (Bàrberi Squarotti 1978), its relationship to the genre of satire (Toscan 1982), as well as explicitly anti-Petrarchist or anti-classicist aspects have also been analysed (Muecke 1984, 75–81; Schulz-Buschhaus 1993). Berni's Capitolo del Gioco della Primiera and Capitolo del prete da Povigliano are, moreover, the subjects of research devoted solely to these texts.16

In studies that deal with the burlesque poems of individual authors, general overviews and observations prevail without discussion of individual aspects. There has been increased research interest in the burlesque capitoli by the painter Agnolo Bronzino.<sup>17</sup> Other authors whose burlesque capitoli have been examined sporadically in recent studies are Francesco Coppetta dei Beccuti,<sup>18</sup> Giovanni Della Casa,<sup>19</sup> Agnolo Firenzuola,<sup>20</sup> Antonfrancesco Grazzini,<sup>21</sup> Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano,22 and Francesco Maria Molza.<sup>23</sup>

Studies that consider Bernesque texts from a genre-related perspective seem particularly informative. In addition to the history of editions (Romei 2012; 2015) and the chronological development of the genre (Romei 1984, 49–84; 1998; 2007a), the constitutive features of poesia bernesca as a genre of Cinquecento lyric poetry have also been described in relation to other genres.24 Further analyses have focused on the relationship between Bernesque poetry and the genre of satire (Floriani 1988, 125–217; Romei 2010) as well as on the treatment of ancient myths in burlesque capitoli (Corsaro 2005). The language of the burlesque capitolo has mainly been addressed in research with regard to sexual metaphors.25 Studies on the form of the capitolo di lode focus primarily on its relation to ancient



Reynolds 1996; Romei 2001; Schulz-Buschhaus 1983.

Parker 1997; Parker 2001; Chiummo 2009; Rossi 2014; Chiummo 2017.

Ossola 1983.

Fachard 2001.

Longhi 1983 (critically, Floriani 1987, 165–173); Romei 1984, 49–84; Orvieto/Brestolini 2000, 199–218; Jossa 2016.

Toscan 1981, critically: Romei 1984, 85–107, 127–135. Similarly critical of Toscan is Floriani 1987, 163–165. In contrast, Marzo (1997) takes a similar approach to Toscan. An examination of the language of the Bernesque capitoli as a representation of orality can be found in D'Angelo (2013).

examples of paradoxical encomiums (Cherchi 1975; Kromann 1975). Themes and motifs of Bernesque capitoli that have been analysed thus far include the burlesque self-portrait (Corsaro 2007), the theme of play (Romei 1993), and the judgements on fine art contained in Bernesque capitoli (Sandrini 2022). Studies of Bernesque capitoli concerning the phenomenon of anti-classicism only occur sporadically (Borsellino 1975, 41–59; Busjan 2012–2013).

#### 1.2.4 Analysis

The Bernesque panegyric poems and epistolary capitoli draw on different models derived from Italian as well as Latin and Ancient Greek literature. The form of the capitoli di lode and its counterpart, the capitoli contro, refer to the model of ancient paradoxical encomiums.<sup>26</sup> This genre first emerged in the realm of Greek sophism from the fifth century B.C. onwards, later appeared in Roman literature,<sup>27</sup> and was taken up again at the beginning of the sixteenth century in Erasmus of Rotterdam's Moriae Encomium. However, these models are not explicitly mentioned in the Bernesque capitoli themselves, whether by concrete intertextual references or by metapoetic commentary. Moreover, as Danilo Romei has noted, the capitoli di lode appear as parodies of paradoxical encomiums because of their multi-layered structure of meaning (1984, 97–98). Among the constitutive features of the capitoli di lode is the use of sexual metaphors that selectively distorts the eulogy formulated on the surface of the text into the obscene and ridiculous.

The epistles in capitolo form, on the other hand, refer to the model of Ariosto's satires. This is also supported by the temporal proximity of the emergence and dissemination of both genres: Ariosto's satires were written between 1517 and 1524–1525 and were published posthumously in 1534, while the epistolary capitoli spread from 1528 onwards, when Francesco Berni wrote the first terzina poems of this kind.<sup>28</sup> Moreover, the Dialogo contra i poeti (cf. chap. 1.9) indicates that Berni was familiar with Ariosto's satires (Romei 1984, 20–22). They seem to have had an exemplary effect on the epistolary capitoli because in

Romei 1984, 72; Longhi 1983, 142.

Ancient Greek examples include the eulogies on pebbles and mice attributed to Polycrates, and later on Lucian of Samosata's eulogy on the fly; in the realm of Roman literature, mention may be made of Marcus Cornelius Fronto's Laudes fumi et pulveris. See Pease 1926, 29; Russell 2016; Cherchi 1975.

These are the capitoli A M. Francesco da Milano ("Messer Francesco, se voi sete vivo") and A M. Marco Veniziano ("Quant'io vo più pensando alla pazzia") (Longhi 1976, 268–269).

these satires – following the model of Horace's Epistulae – the stanzaic form of the terzina was applied to the structure of the epistle for the first time (Gasparini 2015, 122). The Bernesque epistles share obvious similarities with Ariosto's satires: like the latter, the lettere in capitoli are addressed to a named author, who is directly approached at the beginning of the poem. On the linguistic level, both genres share the imitation of epistolary communication, which occurs together with the use of a low, almost colloquial style, with the burlesque poems displaying their low style more clearly than Ariosto's satires do. On the structural level, this corresponds to an associative mode of argumentation and, on the content level, to the dominance of trivial themes.29

The reference to the model of satire in the epistles of the poeti berneschi is also made clear by references to Ariosto and Horace in individual capitoli. Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano's capitolo Al Signor di Malphi ("Uscito dalle gran mura di Roma"), for example, contains a travel description modelled on Horace's iter brundisinum in his satires (I, V) (Mauro d'Arcano 2016, 369). The formulaic requests for news (saper vorrei) <sup>30</sup> that often occur in Bernesque capitoli, where the speaking subject inquires for news from the recipient about certain figures or events, uses a formulation from Ariosto's first satire, which in turn is modelled on Horace's Epistulae. 31

Besides these similarities, however, there are significant differences between the Bernesque epistles and Ariosto's satires. One significant difference seems to lie in an aspect that Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus (1993) has observed with regard to Francesco Berni's sonnets. Schulz-Buschhaus notes the fundamental absence of a satirical attitude in these texts. In Berni's sonnets, there is no direct or indirect reference to a moral value against whose ideal background the "Realität des Gegenwärtigen" (432) can be rejected as false. If we apply this observation to the comparison between Ariosto's satires and the Bernesque epistles, we have to bear in mind that in Ariosto's case, the epistolary communication situation, which is imitated in his satires, as well as the thematic connection to the realm of the everyday merely serve as a starting point to create a depreciatory perspective on present reality in the name of a moral value understood as a comprehensive ideal. This latter aspect is alien to the Bernesque epistles. The simulation of epistolary communication and the thematic connection to the immediacy of the everyday remain the primary theme of the Bernesque capitoli epistolari, but there

Cf. on the characteristics of Ariosto's satires Gasparini 2015, 123.

E.g. in Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano's capitolo A Messer Pietro Carnesecchi (Mauro 2016, 339–342).

Cf. Ariosto 1987, 3–12 and 71–77. Cf. furthermore Longhi 1983, 192–194; Mauro d'Arcano 2016, 342–343, not. 7.

is no positing of a moral concept against which the present reality would be condemned, let alone a hint at an alternative dimension (434).

The mixed editions of Bernesque poetry and satires that started to appear from the middle of the Cinquecento need to be considered separately from the relationship between Bernesque epistles and Ariosto's satires just outlined (cf. chap. 1.2.2). The hybridisation of these two genres takes on different forms in the individual collections: Ercole Bentivoglio transfers features of the satire to the Bernesque capitoli contained in his Satire et altre rime piacevoli, while Pietro Nelli instead infuses satirical capitoli with Bernesque elements. Gabriele Simeoni's Satire alla berniesca already alludes to the style of Bernesque poetry in its title. However, the implementation of this objective in the individual poems has little in common with the Bernesque genre. Even features of the genre of satire only appear sporadically, giving the overall impression that the collection is the expression of a polemic that, contrary to what its title suggests, has little in common with the genre features of Bernesque capitoli and satire (Floriani 1988, 128–182).

Both the capitoli epistolari and the capitoli di lode, in addition to the models presented so far, use elements of Tuscan burlesque literature dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. An example of this is found in the sexual metaphors used in the capitoli di lode, for which the Florentine canti carnascialeschi served as a point of reference. These are carnival songs, which were widespread in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, originally tied to an oral tradition that then took on more codified forms, especially through the works of Lorenzo de' Medici. The masks that feature in these songs describe craft activities and various objects, often turned into sexual metaphors (Ferroni 1978, 234–236). While the sexual metaphors in the canti carnascialeschi are characterised by a repetitive schematism, they reach a higher level of complexity in Bernesque capitoli. The sexual level of meaning in the capitoli di lode – in contrast to the canti carnascialeschi – does not run through the entire text but occurs selectively and interacts with the main theme of paradoxical praise (Romei 1984, 97–98).

However, references to Tuscan burlesque poetry are not limited to the sexual metaphors used in the capitoli di lode. At the thematic and motivic level, the Bernesque capitoli also borrow from this textual tradition. The ghiozzi, anguille, cardi, pesche and orinali praised by Berni are elements drawn in part from the thematic and motivic inventory of the canti carnascialeschi, but also from the sonnets of Burchiello and of Meo de' Tolomei.<sup>32</sup> Other borrowings

Cf. Silvia Longhi's comments in Berni 2001, 681–696.

concern epic models: the caricature-like self-portrait of the authorial figure, as drawn by Berni in the epistolary capitoli Al Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici and Capitolo a Messer Baccio Cavalcanti sopra la gita di Nizza, for example, is modelled on the self-characterisation of the half-giant Margutte in Luigi Pulci's comic epic Morgante (Longhi 1983, 115–119).

On a structural level, too, there are borrowings from forms of Tuscan comic poetry in individual capitoli. Berni's poem in praise of peaches or his capitoli on the plague partially take the structure of paradoxical recipes, which also play a role in Burchiello's and Meo de' Tolomei's sonnets.33

The fact that the examples cited are exclusively from Berni's capitoli already indicates that the connection to fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Tuscan burlesque poetry is far more pronounced in Berni's poems than in later poeti berneschi. Although the use of sexual metaphors remains important in their texts, other thematic and motivic references to Tuscan burlesque poetry occur only sporadically. The tendency to distance themselves from Tuscan models is also reflected in the poeti berneschi at the linguistic level, where the Tuscan idiom was abandoned in favour of a largely non-regional, repetitive repertoire of phrases. This makes Florentine attempts to reclaim the Bernesque genre, such as those made by Grazzini in combination with the publication of Giunti's edition of the Opere burlesche in 1548, seem all the more obsolete. The detachment from Tuscan models illustrates Berni's school-forming function on the poeti berneschi, who succeeded him. Berni's example was clearly valued more highly than the Tuscan sources to which the padre del burlesco stile himself had referred, so that reference to this textual tradition became obsolete (Romei 1984, 69).

The Giunti edition of 1548 by Grazzini is characterised not only by an attempt to reclaim Bernesque poetry for Florence, but also by an anti-Petrarchist reading of Bernesque poems. In Berni's capitoli, however, no programmatic orientation against Petrarchism or Bembism can be discerned, as Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus (1993) in particular has made clear. Berni's capitoli did not develop from a counter-position to Petrarchism, but from textual traditions that preceded Bembo's modelling or existed independently of it (287). Moreover, Berni's capitolo in terza rima took a form that did not belong to the specific formal repertoire of Petrarchist-Bembist poetry. As a result, Berni's capitoli hardly refer in a direct inversion or parody to the typical genera of Petrarchan-Bembist poetry (288). Consequently, the majority of parodic references to Petrarch in Berni's capitoli are not taken from the

Lusus 1983, 78–79; on the type of paradoxical prescriptions in earlier comic poetry cf. Zaccarello 2009.

Rerum vulgarium fragmenta but from the Trionfi, which are also written in capitolo form. The gesture of protest in these cases does not concern Petrarchist poetry of a Bembist persuasion, but the poetics of Petrarchism in general, extending this objection to "alle geschlossenen Formen hohen Stils" (292). Berni's capitolo A Ippolito de' Medici (Non crediate però, Signor, ch'io taccia) illustrates the fact that Petrarch represents only one among several antagonists in this regard. The poem takes as its starting point a supposed request by Ippolito de' Medici to write poetry in the stil piú alto. The rejection formulated in response contains a demarcation of the stile bernesco from a 'higher' kind of poetry:

Provai un tratto a scrivere elegante In prosa e in versi e fecine parecchi et ebbi voglia anch'io d'esser gigante, ma messer Cinzio mi tirò gli orecchi, E disse: "Bernia, fa' pur dell'anguille, ché questo è il proprio umor dove tu pecchi; arte non è da te cantar d'Achille: ad un pastor poveretto tuo pari convien far versi da boschi e da ville". Ma lasciate ch'io abbia anch'io denari, non fia più pecoraio ma cittadino, e metterò gli unquanco a mano e' guari; (Berni et al. 2014, 214–215; vv. 37–48)

The attempts at scrivere elegante outlined in the first tercet are probably to be understood as allusions to epic writing, more specifically to Berni's rifacimento of Boiardo's Orlando innamorato (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 295). The reference to the epic genre is clarified by a quotation from Pulci's Morgante (XVIII, 113, v. 6) in the final verse of the first terzina ("ebbi voglia anch'io d'esser gigante"). The rebuke put into Apollo's mouth ("messer Cinzio"), however, subsequently evokes the realm of Bernesque lyricism, namely the more prosaic "far versi da boschi e da ville". The comparison between the Bernesque poet and the shepherd ("ad un pastor poveretto tuo pari") quotes Virgil's Bucolica (VI 3–5) but is not to be understood literally as positing an equivalence between Bernesque lyric poetry and bucolic poetry in the poetological sense. The allusion to the inventory of figures and settings of pastoral poetry here stands rather for the sphere of the thematic and stylistic plainness to which Bernesque lyric poetry is supposed to belong (Longhi 1983, 214). The quoted passage ends with an ironic twist in which the I pretends to conform to the demand for stylistically higher poems because of a prospective financial remuneration. The scrivere elegante is indicated by adverbs ("unquanco", "guari"), which, as allegedly typical expressions of Petrarchist-Bembist poetry, can be interpreted as acts of ridicule of this genre.<sup>34</sup> The stylistic self-determination of the text thus opposes, on the one hand, Petrarchist lyric poetry, and, on the other – as the first verses of the passage make clear – epic poetry. The antithesis is therefore not directed against the model of Bembism but against a more general idea of high poetry that encompasses both lyric and epic (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 295–296).

In contrast, the capitoli of Berni's successors express a decided opposition to Petrarchist-Bembist poetry. This is probably related to the fact that in the active phase of the so-called Accademia dei Vignaiuoli in the 1530s, an increasing "Kanonisierung und Systematisierung des Petrarkismus als des heroischen Stils der Liebeslyrik" (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 308) was already prevalent. Explicit distancing from Petrarchist poetry can be found, for example, in Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano's capitolo A Messer Pietro Carnasecchi (Mauro d'Arcano 2016, 341, vv. 76–81) and in Agnolo Firenzuola's In lode delle campane (Berni et al. 1548, 287, vv. 247–255), in which the wantonly displayed unpolished style of Bernesque lyricism is defended against the affectation of Bembist lyricism. Unorthodox references to Petrarchism are also evident at motivic and thematic levels. The fruits and growths praised in Berneschi's paradoxical encomiums are used for "blasphemische Überbietungsvergleich[e] mit Apollos und Petrarcas 'lauro'" (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 308). In the Capitolo de' Fichi, for example, Francesco Maria Molza declares that figs are superior to laurels (Berni et al. 1548, 16r., vv. 22–24), and in Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano's Capitolo delle fave, the question is raised as to why the poets preferred mere laurels to beans.35

Here and there, however, even Berni's successors combine their dissociation from Petrarchism with general opposition to any form of high poetry. Thus, in Lodovico Dolce's Capitolo dello Sputo, Ariosto's and Boiardo's Romanzi, Virgil's Georgica and Cicero are rejected, as is a form of Petrarchism which follows Pietro Bembo's model.36 Although the anti-Petrarchist turn is more pronounced among Berni's successors than in Berni's own capitoli, Bembism is not the only antagonist consistently parodically or polemically rejected in the capitoli.

In Berni's capitoli as well as those of his successors, however, strategies opposing high poetry only rarely emerge with such clarity as in the examples

The passage recalls Berni's much-quoted Capitolo a Fra Bastian del Piombo, in which Michelangelo's poetry is highlighted as a positive counter-example to Petrarchists. Petrarchist lyricism is evoked here – like the capitolo A Ippolito de' Medici – through a series of Petrarchic punctuations ("tacete unquanco, pallide vïole,/e liquidi cristalli e fiere snelle", Berni et al. 2014, 236, vv. 29–30).

"Ma donde vien, ch'ogni Poeta canta / Piú tosto i lauri, i pampani, e le spiche, / Che questa gloriosa, e nobil pianta?"; Mauro d'Arcano 2016, 201, lines 31–33.

Berni et al. 1548, 254; cf. Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 314.

described above. Overall, the desultory character of a capriccio-aesthetic remains predominant (Schulz-Buschhaus 1993, 282). In Berni's Capitolo in laude d'Aristotele, for example, the I refers to the verses of the poem as "capricci / ch'a mio dispetto mi voglion venire" (Berni et al. 2014, 200, vv. 104–105), and Mauro d'Arcano's terzina poems deliberately emphasise the digressive structure of the poems, whose length and stringency constantly escape self-control.37 By emphasising this lack of moderation and this volatility, the capitoli resist any definition and do not develop a comprehensive objective that could be understood as a significant counter-proposal to high poetry.

Another phenomenon that can be observed in Berni's capitoli, as well as in those of the poeti berneschi, is a retelling of ancient myths often aimed at comically and obscenely degrading them. The myth of the Golden Age is often invoked in this context.38 An example of this is Berni's Capitolo primo della peste (Berni et al. 2014, 184–190): the poem elevates the time of the plague to an epoch of freedom, in which humanity is freed from the shackles of social conventions and can thus realise the original state of nature once more. As Antonio Corsaro (2005, 394) points out, an ambiguous line of argument is employed here: suffering and disease are praised as signs of an age that, according to the original myth, is characterised precisely by an absence of hardship and distress.

Among Berni's successors, the degradation of the myth of the Golden Age occurs primarily through a sexual interpretation of it, as in Giovanni Della Casa's Capitolo del Martello (Castiglione/Della Casa 1937, 706–709). This capitolo is directed as vituperatio against the notion of the infatuating martel d'amore, which was a widespread motif in the Cinquecento. In Della Casa's capitolo, infatuation appears as a state of suffering resulting from the process of civilisation. In the Golden Age, freedom from any social and sexual regulatory standards had also kept humanity away from the evil of martel d'amore. Through the sexual reinterpretation of the myth, which emphasises the physical and instinctual, it loses any philosophical implications (see for example Fontecedro 2012), as they were consistently discussed in Renaissance culture. At the same time, detachment from the sentimental appropriation of myth, as in the realm of love poetry, becomes apparent.39 This occurs not only through the sexual interpretation of the myth but also through the vituperium of the martel d'amore expressed in the

Cf. on this feature of the Bernesque capitoli Longhi 1983, 210–212, further Bàrberi Squarotti 1978.

Ancient sources of this myth include Hesiod, Works and Days, vv. 109–173; Virgil, Eclogues IV; Horace, Epodes XVI, vv. 35–36 and 49; Ovid, Metamorphoses I, vv. 89–112.

Corsaro 2005, 397. Della Casa himself also draws on the myth in his love poetry, for example in the sextine Di là dove per ostro e pompa ed oro (Della Casa 2003, 201–205).

capitolo. The poem, in fact, opens up a vituperative and trivial perspective on the pain of love, which forms one of the constitutive themes of Petrarchist poetry.

Another genre of ancient (mainly Latin) literature that the capitoli of Berni's successors draw on, is the poetry of Priapus. This will be dealt with in a separate section (chap. 1.4).

#### 1.2.5 Conclusions

Bernesque capitoli constitute a genre that uses features of preceding Tuscan burlesque poetry, the paradoxical encomium and satire. At points, a general opposition to the forms and values of high poetry is expressed in the capitoli using the anti-classicist writing strategies outlined above. The unpolished style and desultory character of the capitoli are pitted against the artificiality of Petrarchist and epic poetry. Moreover, especially among Berni's successors, thematic-motivic obscenity is used in the comic-parodic distortion of these counter-models as well as a degrading reinterpretation of ancient myths. The opposition to Petrarchist lyricism and epic poetry, however, remains within the realm of the unserious, without making any real claim to the establishment of an alternative model.

### 1.3 Poesia fidenziana

#### 1.3.1 Origins

The term poesia fidenziana refers to a lyrical genre that developed from Camillo Scrofa's Cantici di Fidenzio. This is a collection of poems, likely written around the middle of the Cinquecento, which contains fifteen sonnets, a sestina, two capitoli, and an epitaph in the edition of 1562, which is regarded as the vulgata. The protagonist of the collection is the grammar teacher Fidenzio, who in the poems sings as the lyrical I of his (largely unrequited) love for his pupil Camillo. The Cantici are written in an artificial language known as fidenziano, which in morphology and syntax corresponds to Italian, but on the lexical level takes up Latin terms and latinising neologisms.

Cantici di Fidenzio had an educational effect in the environment of the Accademia Olimpica in Vicenza, to which Scroffa himself also belonged, so that other members in this circle also wrote poems based on the Cantici in the second half of the Cinquecento. In addition to the fidenziano, the epigones also used the figure of the pedant as protagonist and first-person speaker. However, the theme of love, still central in the Cantici, was increasingly marginalised in their poems and in some cases turned heterosexual. The proliferation of encomiums and correspondence poems among Scroffa's successors also illustrates the development of the genre as a group phenomenon linked to the structures of the Accademia Olimpica.

The question as to which author the Cantici di Fidenzio should be attributed to remained open for a long time, since in the Cinquecento editions, no names other than that of the protagonist (and intra-fictional author) Fidenzio are mentioned. The earliest edition to include a portrait of Camillo Scroffa in the frontispiece did not appear until 1743. Investigations into the author's identity, which began as early as the eighteenth century and continued until the end of the nineteenth century, have confirmed this attribution.<sup>40</sup> Little information survives about Scroffa himself; it is at least certain that he lived between 1526–1527 and 1565 and was a member of the Accademia Olimpica in Vicenza (Hartmann 2013, 43–51). Moreover, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, attempts were made to identify the figures of Fidenzio and Camillo with extratextual individuals, namely with the grammar teacher Pietro Fidenzio Giunteo da Montagnana, active in Padua during the Cinquecento, and a certain Camillo Strozzi from Mantova. Although the existence of these two individuals in the sixteenth century can be proven, no definite indication can be given as to whether the literary figures of Fidenzio and Camillo refer to them.<sup>41</sup>

The Cantici di Fidenzio are assumed to have been produced in the middle of the sixteenth century. The collection of poems likely originated after the publication of the widely received second edition of the novel Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in 1545, which especially influenced the linguistic form of the Cantici di Fidenzio (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, IX–X). Similarly, the Cinquecento comedies, whose inventory of characters includes pedantic grammar teachers, influenced the Cantici di Fidenzio. Francesco Belo's comedy Il pedante (1529) and Pietro Aretino's Il Marescalco (1533), in particular, which were in any case published before the Cantici di Fidenzio were written, should be mentioned here.

At the same time as Camillo Scroffa, at least two authors emerged who imitated his maniera. The poems of an author described by Trifone as 'Pseudo-Scroffa', who could, however, be more than one person, were integrated with Scroffa's poems in the undated edition of the Cantici et Elegie del Pedante appassionato (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, 50). Among Scroffa's earliest epigones,

Zorzi 1722; Zeno 1724; Ferrari 1802; Da Schio in Scroffa 1832; Crovato 1891.

Hartmann 2013, 51–54; Trifone (2019, 69–70) endorses the plausibility of the above thesis but cannot cite any evidence for it.

moreover, were Iano Argiroglotto, about whom nothing more is known than the pseudonym (50), and Giambattista Dal Gorgo, a contemporary of Scroffa and a probable member of the Accademia Olimpica (61). This academy was the central point of reference for the development and dissemination of the socalled poesia fidenziana in the following decades. Giambattista Giroldi (known within the academy as 'Pudentio Spinedo'), who worked in Vicenza as a member of the Accademia Olimpica from around 1570, provided significant impetus. The sonnets dedicated to him by other academicians testify to his pre-eminence within the Vicentine circle of poeti fidenziani, joined by Michelangelo Angelico (alias Cintio Pierio), Aristarco (Palemone), Giovan Battista Liviera (Lattantio Calliopeo), Angelo Nigro (Albificato), Fabio Pace (Gallenico Irenio), and Tropotipo.<sup>42</sup> Outside Vicenza, only isolated publications of Fidenzian poems were printed, for example by Scipione Metelli from Castelnuovo in Lunigiana and Anton Maria Garofani from Parma (Romei 1998, 20).

The affiliation of Scroffa's poems and those of his epigones under the heading of a common genre is based primarily on the use of the lingua fidenziana, whose constitutive features are essentially preserved despite tendencies towards simplification and banalisation among individual authors (Romei 1998, 21–22). Another genre constant is the sonnet, which is the predominant poetic form both in the Cantici themselves and among its imitators. The figure of the pedant also remains the protagonist and first-person speaker in the fidenziani poems, though it loses some of the characteristics that its typification in the Cantici di Fidenzio is based on. The topos of pederasty appears only in the poems of Iano Argiroglotto. The love poems of other fidenziani (for example, by Dal Gorgo, Giroldi, Liviera and Pierio), on the other hand, are addressed to female characters, which limits the comic aspect of these texts primarily to their linguistic form. In addition to the frequent abandonment of this topos, it can be observed on a general level that love poems appear only marginally in the textual corpus of some epigones and are pushed back in favour of encomiums and correspondence poems (Romei 1998, 20–23). The poems of these last two types are, in most cases, addressed to other fidenziani and illustrate the character of this genre as a phenomenon of community-fashioning tied to the Accademia Olimpica group.

In addition to the poetry of the fidenziani, the Cantici di Fidenzio also partially influenced comedy production in the second half of the Cinquecento. This can be seen most clearly in Girolamo Razzi's comedy Gostanza, which features a pedant called 'Fidenzio' who claims to be the author of the Cantici di Fidenzio

Cf. the respective sections in Scroffa 1981, 77–106.

(Stäuble 1985, 627). Allusions to the Cantici di Fidenzio can also be found in the comedies Prigione d'amore (1592) by Sforza Oddi, La Idropica (1584) by Battista Guarini and Belisario Bulgarini's Gli Scambi (1611) (Stäuble 1991, 75).

#### 1.3.2 Text and edition history

The first dated edition of the Cantici di Fidenzio appeared in Reggio Emilia in 1562, but it was likely preceded by the Cantici et elegie Del Pedante appassionato, published without any references to date or location, and two editions that are now lost (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, 117–128). The 1562 edition seems to have been born out of an effort to bring to market an edition without texts by other authors. Indeed, whereas in the Cantici ed elegie, Scroffa's texts are interwoven, without any other specification, with those of an author referred to in modern editions as Pseudo-Scroffa, the 1562 edition contains only Scroffa's texts. Moreover, the poems follow a more logical arrangement than the earlier edition, which was also adopted in later editions of Scroffa's poems. Fidenzio's name in the title of the collection also suggests an increased focus on this figure. Since Scroffa was still alive in 1562, it is at least conceivable that he influenced the design of this edition (Trifone 1979, 3–13).

Later editions again included the poems of Scrofa's epigones, but these were presented in a separate section. Here, Iano Argiroglotto was given precedence: from 1564 onwards editions of the Cantici contain a section reserved for him; in the 1568 edition, his name is even mentioned in the title of the collection. However, the texts of other fidenziani were not included in the printings of the Cantici until approximately 1600 (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, 121–123).

In addition to the aforementioned prints, numerous collected manuscripts with sections dedicated to Fidenzio's poems also survived the sixteenth century. Of these, at least four are likely older than the earliest prints of the Cantici di Fidenzio that are still accessible today.<sup>43</sup> The Fidenzian sections of these manuscripts exclusively contain Scroffa's poems, although the number and arrangement of the texts vary.

The only modern critical edition of the Cantici di Fidenzio, which also offers an appendix of poems by other poeti fidenziani, was edited by Pietro Trifone in 1981. Scroffa's poems are also included in the volume Poeti del Cinquecento edited in 2001 by Guglielmo Gorni, Massimo Danzi and Silvia Longhi.

Trifone offers a description of the manuscripts in Scroffa 1981, 109–118.

#### 1.3.3 Research

Although the first literary approaches to the poesia fidenziana were established at the end of the nineteenth century (Ferrari 1892), few studies of this genre have featured in more recent research, which, moreover, focus almost exclusively on the Cantici di Fidenzio. Regarding Camillo Scroffa's collection of poems, in addition to the context of composition (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, 47–49; Hartmann 2013, 43–76) and history of editions, the fidenziano as an artificial language has also been studied, with attempts to determine criteria of demarcation vis-à-vis the language of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili on the one hand, and Macaronic<sup>44</sup> on the other (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, 109–147; X–XXIX). Much of the research emphasises the parodic character of the Cantici di Fidenzio, although the respective direction of impact is assessed differently: on the one hand, Scroffa's collection of poems is understood as a parody of Petrarchist poetry, which often cannot be separated from the parody of the figure of the pedant,45 and, on the other hand, as a parody of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Paccagnella 1982). Other aspects of the Cantici di Fidenzio addressed by individual works include the potential erotic meaning of the text (Hartmann 2013, 213–235; critically, Trifone 2019) and intertextual references to ancient texts, especially to the genre of Roman love elegy (Hartmann 2013, 111–112; Friede 2020). The texts of other poeti fidenziani (Trifone 1979; Stäuble 1985, 630–633), as well as the development of the genre after the publication of the Cantici di Fidenzio (Romei 1998) have only rarely been studied.

#### 1.3.4 Analysis

As mentioned above, the Cantici di Fidenzio employ features of the allegorical novel attributed to Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which was published by Aldo Manuzio in Venice in 1499, with a second edition published in 1545. Both Colonna's novel and Scroffa's Cantici use an artificial language

This artificial mixed language is characteristic of the works of Teofilo Folengo (Maccheronee). These texts are not considered here in the context of anti-classicism, because the characteristics identified in relation to other anti-classicist texts do not fully apply there.

Trifone in Scroffa 1981, 9–46; Stäuble 1985; Orvieto/Brestolini 2000, 257–268. While the studies cited link the parody of Petrarchism to that of pedantism, Capata (2005, 153–169) exclusively sees a parody of the figure of the pedant in Scroffa's collection of texts; merely an alternative, but not a parodistic reference is established to Petrarchist lyric.

that corresponds to the vernacular in morphology and syntax but is characterised by Latinisms and Graecisms in its lexis. The two texts also noticeably correspond on a structural level. The second sonnet of the Cantici di Fidenzio, entitled Ne i preteriti giorni ho compilato (Scroffa 1981, 4), is presented as a dedication of the poetry collection to Fidenzio and echoes the dedication Poliphilus Poliae S.P.D. at the beginning of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, where the first-person narrator Polifilo dedicates the novel to his beloved Polia (Paccagnella 1982, 168). This parallel is also supported with further details: in both Polifilo and Fidenzio, the introductory text is referred to as a munusculo (gift), and its offering is combined in both cases with the openly formulated hope that the recipient will reward the literary efforts with expressions of love (Hartmann 2013, 124).

In the poem that follows the dedicatory sonnet, Le tumidule genule, i nigerrimi (Scroffa 1981, 5), the link to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, already implicitly established, is explicitly marked by a comparison between Fidenzio's desire and Polifilo's (vv. 12–14). Another structural similarity between the two texts is the epitaph placed at the end, for the beloved in Polifilo and for the lover himself in Fidenzio (Paccagnella 1982, 169–170). This difference seems relevant regarding the references to Petrarchist canzonieri that also appear in the Cantici (see below).

In addition to the parallels described above, however, fundamental differences between the Cantici and the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili are noteworthy, which can be traced back to the emergence of the two works in the context of different discourses. The linguistic experiment of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili took place in the second half of the Quattrocento and thus in a phase in which the questione della lingua and disputes on both the status of Latin on the one hand and the vernacular on the other had not yet produced a dominant model. The language of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili can thus be seen as taking up position in the context of a debate that still allowed for different solutions, in which the vernacular language experienced an upward revaluation through elements taken from classical languages (Dionisotti 1968, 9; Trifone 1981b, IX–XII). By the time the Cantici were written in the mid-sixteenth century, Bembo's model had already established a widely received solution to the issues indicated above. Experiments that deviated from it, such as polifilesco, would have seemed obsolete by this time (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, IX–XII). The artificial character of this language, but also its similarity to the mixture of Latin and Italian used by the figure of the pedant in comedies of the Cinquecento, probably led to the use of an artificial language strongly based on polifilesco in a parodic function to caricature the figure of Fidenzio in the Cantici.

The figure of the pedantic grammaticus, who makes excessive use of Latinisms and learned allusions, first appeared in Italian comedy with Francesco Belo's Il Pedante (1529) and remained present in the genre throughout the century.46 In addition to the mixed Latin-Italian (and to a lesser extent Greek) language, this comic character is characterised by an ostentatiously displayed erudition, which often turns out to be superficial and unworldly (Stäuble 1991, 25). The character of Fidenzio also corresponds to this characterisation. Although Fidenzio's language seems more homogeneous and less capricious than that of the pedants in the comedies (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, XX), the impression of a caricature-like mode of expression persists even in the Cantici. The frequent hyperboles and pleonasms contribute to this, as does the use of Latin neologisms for expressions for which Italian equivalents in fact exist (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, XXI–XXVII). Another element that the parody of the pedant in the Cantici is based on is the pederasty attributed to him. This is a topos for which earlier examples can also be identified. In Dante's Divina Commedia, for example, the grammarian Priscian dwells in hell among the sodomites (Inferno XV, 109), and Ariosto's sixth satire contains a warning against teachers indulging in this vice.

However, Fidenzio's characterisation as a grammar teacher who is showing off his erudition is based not only on the language he uses, but also on an abundance of references to various Latin texts. Predominant among these are allusions to Virgil (especially to the Aeneid, but partly also to the Bucolica), Horace (Sermones, Epistolae), Ovid (Metamorphoses) and Catullus (Carmina). The pedant Fidenzio makes some of these references incorrectly, either in content or by their use in an inappropriate context, thereby creating a comic contrast to his ostensible literary education. This is evident, for example, in sonnet XIII, Venite, hendecasyllabi, venite (Scroffa 1981, 15), which concludes a group of sonnets (XI–XIII) whose theme is a brief, happy period of experiencing love. In this final sonnet, Fidenzio invokes "hendecasyllabi", "lepidi versi" and "soavi accenti" (vv. 1–2) to sing of a gift received from Camillo – a dried plum seed.<sup>47</sup> In the opening verse, Fidenzio alludes to the beginning of one of Catullus's poems (Carmen 42), which, as an invective against a prostitute, is little suited in content to the celebratory tone of Fidenzio's sonnet. With the 'soavi accenti', the pedant invokes a Petrarch sonnet about Laura's death (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta CCLXXXIII), which equally contrasts with the phase of happy love celebrated by Fidenzio (Hartmann 2013, 155–157).

In other cases, intertextual references support the topos of pederasty. This occurs, for example, in sonnet II, already cited, with which Fidenzio dedicates the collection of poems to Camillo. The first tercet of the sonnet ("Hei, hei Fidentio, hei Fidentio misello, / che dementia t'inganna? ancora ignori / ch'il tuo

Cf. the overview in Stäuble 1991, 11–13.

Cf. on the possible sexual significance of this element Hartmann 2013, 155 and 233.

Camil munusculi non cura?", Scroffa 1981, 4, vv. 9–11) contains allusions to Virgil's Bucolica (II, 69). Thus, the character of Fidenzio is paralleled with that of the shepherd Corydon, who in the verses cited gives expression to his homosexual courtship of the young Alexis (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, XXXV). In other parts of the text, a connection is made between Fidenzio and the character of Dido from Virgil's Aeneid. This is particularly evident in capitolo XVII, O d'un alpestre scopulo più rigido (Scroffa 1981, 20–28), in which Fidenzio is tormented by fears of love during the night like Dido (Hartmann 2013, 171). It also seems significant in the context of the Cantici that the references to the Aeneid equate Fidenzio with a female figure, implicitly giving him a sexually passive role.<sup>48</sup> Thus, in this case too, intertextual references serve to expose Fidenzio as a pederast and reinforce the parodic effect.

The Cantici thus use topoi and linguistic aspects of comedies written during the Cinquecento that include pedants, but place them in the context of a new genre by applying them to a collection of poems. Although the theme of antipedantism appears in several places in Cinquecento poetry prior to the Cantici di Fidenzio, the pedant nevertheless is innovative as the protagonist and firstperson speaker of a canzoniere-like collection of poems. In this context, the pedant parody also connects to the parody of Petrarchist poetry, which is evident at several levels of the Cantici.

On a macrostructural level, similarities with the structure of the Hypneratomachia Poliphili have already been highlighted. However, the arrangement of the poems in the Cantici can also be seen in relation to the structure of Petrarchist canzonieri, with which the collection shares some features. These include, for example, the rudimentary narrative structure of the Cantici, in which phases of amorous sorrow alternate with those of amorous happiness, and which, as in Petrarchist poetry collections, is supported by allusions to external events.<sup>49</sup> Another feature that the Cantici share with Petrarchist canzonieri is the opening sonnet, modelled on the proemial sonnet of Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Erspamer 1987, 110–111; Schneider 2007, 54–57):

Voi ch'auribus arrectis auscultate in lingua etrusca il fremito e il rumore de' miei sospiri pieni di stupore forse d'intemperantia m'accusate.

Se vedeste l'eximia alta beltate de l'acerbo lanista del mio core

Cf. on the aspect of sexual passivity also Hartmann 2013, 58–76.

Cf. on the narrative structure of Petrarchist canzonieri Regn 1987c, 32–35; Schneider 2007, 57.

non sol dareste venia al nostro errore, ma di me havreste, ut aequum est, pietate.

Hei mihi, io veggio bene apertamente ch'a la mia dignità non si conviene perditamente amare, et n'erubesco;

ma la beltà antedicta mi ritiene con tal violentia che continuamente opto uscir di prigion, et mai non esco. (Scroffa 1981, 3, son. I)

As with Petrarch, in the first sonnet of the Cantici the I directly addresses the audience and presents the poems as testimony to his experience of love. Reference to the model is reinforced by the borrowing of individual words and stylemes, whereby the elements taken from Petrarch are often transferred from a figurative, spiritual sphere of meaning to the physical-trivial. Thus, to Petrarch's "ascoltate" is attached a physical detail ("ch'auribus arrectis auscultate"), the sound ("suono") of the sighs of love is degraded to "il fremito e il rumore" and "mi vergogno", referring to an emotional and moral dimension, is likewise transformed into the physically perceptible "n'erubesco" (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, XXXVIII). The differences from the Petrarchist model already indicated at the linguistic level emerge even more strongly in relation to the perspective from which the I presents the love experience underlying the poems. Whereas in Petrarchist canzonieri the I conveys it as a past experience from which he has since ruefully distanced himself, no pentimento is evident in Fidenzio's introductory sonnet.50 Consequently, the Cantici also lack a division of distinct temporal levels (the time of the love experience and the purification from it) as well as different instances of the lyrical I (the loving I and the distanced, matured I). Fidenzio remains attached to the effect of love until the end, to which he is exposed in defenceless passivity. This reversal of the Petrarchist model also seems to extend to the end of the collection, when it is not the beloved who dies, as is often the case in Petrarchist canzonieri, but the lover himself.

References to Petrarchist poetry are not limited to the introductory sonnet, but also appear in other poems of the Cantici. Some of these incorporate individual Petrarchist stylemes, while in others extended Petrarchan paraphrases are realised. In sonnet VII, Mandami in Syria, mandami in Cilicia (Scroffa 1981, 9), for instance, whose connection to Petrarch's sonnet Ponmi ove 'l sole occide i fiori et l'erba is evident both in the sonnet's content structure and individual verses or expressions, the transposition of Petrarchist verses into Fidenzian alone creates a

Orvieto/Brestolini 2000, 295; Hartmann 2013, 118.

comic effect. In part, however, the parody is also based on the application of the Petrarchist inventory of themes and motifs to the imaginary world of the pedant Fidenzio. In place of the symbolic locations only hinted at in Petrarch's text, to which the I could hypothetically be transported without interrupting his sospir, Fidenzio gives concrete geographical references ("Syria", "Cilicia", "Gallia ulteriore", "mar Rubeo", "Paphlagonia", "Bitinia", "Fenicia", vv. 1–4). This exaggerated concreteness allows the emphatically displayed erudition that characterises the figure of the pedant to emerge here as well, yet the passage also recalls the motif of enumerating geographical locations as metaphors for various sexual practices, a common motif in Bernesque capitoli. Examining the Fidenzian sonnet from this perspective, "Syria", "Cilicia", and "Bitinia" can be understood as countries where homosexual practices are common, "Gallia ulteriore" as the place of origin of syphilis, "mar Rubeo" as a metaphor for menstruation and "Fenicia" (as the birthplace of Dido) for sodomising women.51

In addition to the references to Petrarchist lyricism through linguistic, motivic, and thematic elements, the meter of the Fidenzian sonnets is another aspect through which the parodic function of the Petrarchan allusions in the Cantici becomes apparent. Contrary to the rime piane (with stress on the penultimate syllable of the verse) typically used in sonnets, rime sdrucciole predominate in the Cantici, in which the verse ending is stressed on the antepenultimate syllable. In this way, the sonnets exhibit an awkward metrical structure that contrasts comically with the rhythmic harmony of Petrarchist poetry. Consequently, the term "rumori" used in the first sonnet of the Cantici to describe Fidenzio's sighs of love seems even more appropriate. The comic effect of this approach is reinforced in many of these verses ending on -culo, which highlights the sexual overtones of Fidenzio's lyrical outpourings.52

The procedures thus presented, which contribute to the establishment of references to Petrarchist poetry in the Cantici, seem to correspond to a twofold parodic orientation: on the one hand, the parody thus realised is aimed towards the invoked genre of Petrarchist poetry; on the other hand, the references to

Cf. Hartmann 2013, 228–229 and Toscan 1981, 664–687. Whether a second, obscene level of meaning can be reconstructed throughout the Cantici di Fidenzio, as assumed by Hartmann, seems questionable. The analysis carried out by Hartmann based on poems II–IV and VII–VIII, which seems mechanistic in places, only partially leads to results (213–235). It is conceivable that the obscene level of meaning – as in the Bernesque capitoli – only occurs selectively and does not form a continuous level of reference. Cf. also Trifone 2019, 73–74.

The use of expressions ending in -culo also occurs in pedant comedies (Stäuble 1991, 51). Silvia Longhi's hypothesis, according to which rime sdrucciole are used in lamenting poems, rime piane in poems of joyful content, does not stand up to closer scrutiny (Longhi 2001, 1141–1142; Hartmann 2013, 125–126).

Petrarch serve to parody the pedant Fidenzio himself. The latter appears ridiculous in that he uses techniques of Petrarchist lyricism to sing of a homosexual love affect that is not envisaged in the genuinely Petrarchist lyric model.53 The invoked Petrarchist elements are, moreover, transposed into a language that is in and of itself a component of pedant parody. Another aspect pointing in this direction is the partly inappropriate transposition of Petrarchan references in terms of content, as well as their modification according to the pedant's perspective, thus alienating them from their original context of meaning. These procedures expose Fidenzio's ostensible erudition as superficial and thus contribute equally to the parodistic profile of the protagonist.

In addition to Petrarchist lyric poetry, the Roman love elegy, as Friede (2020) highlights, is another genre from which several features of the Cantici stem. This is already suggested by paratextual elements in individual prints and manuscripts: for example, the edition likely published in Padua before 1562 bears the title Cantici et elegie Del Pedante appassionato, and in several manuscripts the capitolo O d'un alpestre scopulo piú rigido is referred to as Elegia Fidentii Cam- [m]illifili (Trifone in Scroffa 1981, 109–118; Friede 2020, 297). The resumption of the sospiri from Petrarch's proemial sonnet in the opening sonnet of the Cantici is also significant in this context because the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta itself uses elements of the elegiac code, which, with the description of the agonies of love and the warning to the reader, are already evident in the first sonnet (Friede 2020, 296). The involvement of the I in love's sorrows described above, which, unlike in Petrarchist poetry, is not purified by any pentimento, corresponds "eins zu eins der in der römischen Liebeselegie dargestellten Grundsituation" (296). Other features of the Cantici di Fidenzio that resemble the Roman love elegy are the mention of a homosexual love relationship, which – for instance in the Priapees of the Corpus Tibullianum – can also be found throughout Latin elegies, as well as the "konturierte Ineinssetzung des Lebens des Sprecher-Ich als Dichtenden und zugleich als Liebenden" (297). The characterisation of the Cantici di Fidenzio as wooing poetry, courting not only the favour of the beloved but also that of the audience, also points to the model of the Roman elegy. Here, Fidenzio's wooing often takes on a plaintive tone, making it a lamentatio in the sense of the codice elegiaco (297). The aforementioned sonnet Venite hendecasyllabi, venite occupies a special position in this context, assuming a meta-discursive function (297) with its rejection of the "elegie querule et dolenti" (v. 3).

'Homosexual love' is, of course, a simplification. The field of phenomena that, from a modern perspective, appear to belong to this category is manifold, and there are varieties like the chaste and 'sincere' neoplatonic love for a man, as sung in Benedetto Varchi's Sonetti, which are highly serious and, as it were, above suspicion; see Huss 2001.

While Scroffa's poems contain numerous and often conspicuous references to other genres and models, these occur less frequently in the poems of other poeti fidenziani. Pietro Trifone's edition of the poems of Scroffa's successors cites no evidence of intertextual allusions in these texts, though Antonio Stäuble has reconstructed references to other texts in two of Iano Argiroglotto's sonnets: in the sonnet Il crispo di fin auro erroneo crine (in Scroffa 1981, 58), there are clear references to Pietro Bembo's sonnet Crin d'oro crespo e d'ambra tersa e pura (Stäuble 1985, 631). In addition to the general theme of the descriptio of the beloved, lexical correspondences between the two poems stand out, making Argiroglotto appear as a free translation of Bembo's sonnet into Fidenzian. Unlike other parodies of Bembo's sonnet (cf. chap. 1.1), Argiroglotto does not employ a deformative description of the beloved. The comic effect of the sonnet lies solely in its linguistic design and the use of Petrarchist motifs to describe the pedant's pederastic love affairs.

Iano Argiroglotto's sonnet Viviam, suaviolo mio, et con syncero (included in Scroffa 1981, 56), on the other hand, echoes Catullus's Carmen V (Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus), with which it shares the basic theme of love defying moral expectations as well as correspondences or similarities in wording. The term "suaviolo" (v. 1) is used in Argiroglotto's sonnet as a nickname for the beloved. At the same time, as a diminutive of the Latin noun suavium ('kiss'), it draws on another poem written by Catullus (XCIX) in which the word also holds this meaning. The aforementioned Carmen is a text from the Juventius cycle, which has a homosexual theme. In addition to the clear reference to Carmen V, Argiroglotto's poem also contains a subtler allusion to another of Catullus's poems that provides literary legitimation for the homosexual theme of the sonnet (Stäuble 1985, 632).

Due to the paucity of research on Scroffa's epigones, no claims can be made as to whether similar references and intertextual procedures can be found in other texts of the fidenziani. However, Argiroglotto's special position, already observed in relation to the history of editions and the use of the topos of homosexuality, makes it conceivable that his texts also differ from other fidenziani regarding textual references.

#### 1.3.5 Conclusions

The references in the Cantici di Fidenzio to classical texts and genres as well as Petrarchist poetry, constitute a set of devices that serve to parody the pedant Fidenzio. The polemic against pedantic poetry is so prevalent that it makes the Cantici the anti-pedanticist text par excellence. References to classical texts and Petrarchism are comically distorted or incorrect in content so that the pretentious erudition of the first-person speaker Fidenzio seems superficial and ridiculous. This is reinforced, for example, by the relegation of Petrarchist elements to the sphere of the trivial and the physical, but also the structure of the collection as a canzoniere without pentimento, which is moreover applied to a pederastic relationship. Allusions to Latin texts are invoked incorrectly or in an inappropriate context, or else these references parallel Fidenzio with female or pederastic figures. The genre is constituted, alongside antipedantismo, by the dominantly placed position accorded to 'another sexuality'. In poems by Scroffa's successors, these strategies only appear selectively, whereby the genre loses its parodic conciseness.

### 1.4 Priapea

#### 1.4.1 Origins

The lyric poetry of Priapus is a genre that originated in Ancient Greece but spread primarily in Roman literature. Latin priapea first appeared in the form of wall inscriptions in sanctuaries and on statues dedicated to Priapus, the god of gardens and fertility. This custom was later adopted by poets who imitated these inscriptions with literary pretensions as book epigrams (Goldberg 1992, 25). Examples of such priapea include some of Martial's epigrams,<sup>54</sup> the priapea contained in the Appendix Vergiliana and the anonymous collection of Carmina Priapea from the first century A.D. Thematic reference to the god Priapus are characteristic to this type of poetry, realised within a limited, repetitive repertoire of themes. These include the oversized phallus as Priapus' central attribute, worship of the god and the sacrifices offered to him, the punishment of thieves who invade the garden of Priapus, and degenerate sexual practices, in which the god indulges (Goldberg 1992, 25–27).

Priapic lyricism was later received in the neo-Latin poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (cf. Calì 1894), but seems to have experienced a broader revival, especially in the first half of the Cinquecento. Towards the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, numerous editions of Latin Priapus poetry appeared, among which the edition of Diversorum veterum poetarum in Priapum lusus, published by Manuzio in 1517 and corrected by Pietro Bembo, is noteworthy. Several neo-Latin Priapic poems were produced, especially in the 1530s and 1540s, including, for example, Pietro Bembo's poem

Cf. for instance VI.16, VI.49, VI.72, VI.73, VIII.40, XIV.70.

Priapus that appeared posthumously in 1552 (Bembo 1990, 16–19). This style also found favour in vernacular Italian poetry of the Cinquecento period but did not achieve the same breadth as in the neo-Latin production.

#### 1.4.2 Nicolò Franco: La Priapea

The only collection of vernacular poems that systematically includes elements of Priapic lyricism is Nicolò Franco's La Priapea (1541). In other vernacular poems, such as the Bernesque capitoli, Priapic lyricism is only a selectively invoked point of reference, which is not fundamentally constitutive of the genre.

Nicolò Franco's Priapea are a collection of 198 sonnets, first published in 1541 together with the Rime contro Pietro Aretino by the same author. The Priapea employs the model of ancient Priapic poetry, especially at the thematic and motivic levels. In Franco's Priapea, references to the ancient genre are embedded in the cultural context of the Cinquecento through references to literary and political themes as well as extra-literary figures.

The collection opens with a dedicatory sonnet to Pietro Aretino, which is not, however, the encomium of the addressee that may be expected at this point. Aretino is called a pederast in this poem, and the priapea continues the invective against the flagello dei principi initiated in the Rime contro Pietro Aretino. The counterpart to this dedicatory poem is the final sonnet of the collection, in which Priapus asks for mercy because Aretino has infected him with syphilis. A structure that is rudimentarily narrative but predominantly one of thematic variation develops between these two poles. Dominant themes, which are addressed in the form of sonnet series on similar subjects, are the characteristics and sexual preferences of Priapus, the garden of the god, the parody of Petrarchist poetry, polemics against Aretino, the principi and the clergy, as well as political satire.

The writing of the Priapea can be linked, on the one hand, to Nicolò Franco's engagement with Latin Priapic poetry, as evidenced by a letter written in June 1541 and addressed to Giovanni Antonio Guidone, the publisher of the first edition of the Priapea. In this letter, Franco announced the publication of his "Priapea Vulgare" together with Rime contro Pietro Aretino. On the other hand, for his Latin commentary on "la Priapea di Virgilio" (Franco 1916a, 3), by which title the anthology Diversorum veterum poetarum in Priapum lusus, published by Manuzio in 1517, was probably meant, he envisaged publication together with other Latin texts: "perché i Comentari latini fatti sopra quella di Virgilio, s'imprimeranno colle cose latine" (Franco 1916a, 3). This Latin commentary circulated in manuscript form in Venice and was repeatedly edited by Franco over the period of twenty years until it finally fell victim to destruction by the Inquisition in 1558 (Bruni 1977, 90). In addition to his preoccupation with ancient Priapic poetry, the invective against Pietro Aretino also influenced the creation of Franco's Priapea (cf. chap. 1.6), which is evident from the individual swipes at Aretino in the collection of poems.

#### 1.4.3 Text and edition history

Information about the source of the jointly published Rime contro Pietro Aretino and La Priapea is tenuous, due at least in part to the fact that Nicolò Franco's works were already placed on the Index in 1557 and presumably destroyed (Bruni 1977, 127–128). The 1541 editio princeps, published by Giovanni Antonio Guidone, was long considered lost until a copy of it was located in the All Souls College Library in Oxford in 2006 (Falardo 2008, 319). Of the second edition, likely published in 1546, neither copies nor information about the place of publication and publisher are known. Only one copy of the third edition, published in Basel in 1548, is preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. The only modern edition of the Priapea was published in 1916 by Enrico Sicardi.

#### 1.4.4 Research

Only a limited number of studies have been published on Nicolò Franco's Priapea. Carmelo Calì's study of priapea in Neo-Latin and Italian literature from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, published as early as 1894, analyses the Priapea's references to the ancient lyric genre of Priapic poetry, listing connections between individual sonnets by Franco and the pseudo-Virgilian Carmina Priapea (Calì 1894, 104–107). More recently, Roberto L. Bruni (1997) has dealt with the problem of the history of editions of the Priapea and attempted to reconstruct the structure of the no longer existing editio princeps from surviving prints and manuscripts. Domenica Falardo (2004) filters out thematic nuclei in Nicolò Franco's poems, emphasising that the Priapea, in comparison with other texts by the Beneventan author, are characterised by an intensified polemic against the clergy and rulers, as well as against pedants, mannerist poets and Petrarchists. Falardo's account is limited to highlighting these themes by way of example, based on a selection of the Priapea's sonnets, without, however, subjecting them to more in-depth analysis. Patrizia Bettella (2011, 302) cites Franco's Priapea as an example of the so-called poesia puttanesca, whose subject matter is satire against prostitutes, but refers only to the sonnet Priapo, l'alma Tullia Rangona, in which Tullia d'Aragona, as a Petrarchist lyricist, is the target of satirical verses.

#### 1.4.5 Analysis

Reference to the ancient genre of Priapic poetry, already evident in the work's title, runs through all the sonnets in that, on the one hand, genre-specific themes are incorporated and, on the other, stylistic features taken from the Carmina Priapea are of programmatic relevance. Themes typical of Latin Priapic poetry that also appear in Franco's Priapea include the god's attributes, most notably the oversized phallus, and comparison with other gods, the garden of Priapus and the crops growing there, the veneration Priapus receives from garden visitors, and the thieves that haunt the garden. The changing identity of the I that is speaking in the sonnets, which is partly assigned to Priapus himself, partly to visitors to the garden, also corresponds to the model of the Carmina Priapea.

Stylistic reference to the ancient genre comes to the fore above all in sonnets 1–8,55 which, with the stylistic self-determination formulated therein, assume the function of a proem. Franco's characterisation of Priapea as "Opra [. . .] vile" (Franco 1916a, 7; son. 3, v. 1), which is accompanied by a programmatically established preference for direct, obscene language (11; son. 8), echoes the definition of the Carmina Priapea as "horto carmina digna, non libello" (Priapées 2, v. 2) and the dichotomy between "obscure" and "Simplicus [. . .] Latine dicere" (3, v. 1 and vv. 9–10) established in the third poem of the Latin collection. Franco's Priapea thus stylise themselves as a collection of sonnets, clearly following the model of ancient Priapic lyricism on both a thematic and stylistic level.

In the Priapea, a clear demarcation from other literary genres can be observed, which cannot always be reduced to a single counter-model. In sonnet 2, the "versi senza vergogna" of the Priapea (Franco 1916a, 7; v. 2) are controversially contrasted with epic poetry, and in sonnet 3 with the lyric poetry of the "Ser Petrarchisti dal bel stile" (8; vv. 5–6). The demarcation from the high poetry thus outlined is closely related to an anti-court polemic that runs thematically throughout the collection. The stylistic artificiality of these genres is associated with the sphere of influence of the court, whose ostensible sophistication is dismissed as hypocritical. The crude directness of the sonnets of the Priapea is thus presented as an undisguised opposition to vituperations emanating from the courtly world.

The initially formulated general opposition to high poetry is most often specified more concretely as one to Petrarchist poetry, which the collection of poems parodically or satirically rejects by means of various strategies. Some sonnets directly address Petrarchist poets, whose poetry is sometimes dismissed as

The numbering of the sonnets draws on the 1916 edition of the Priapea.

contrived and capricious (e.g. son. 3, Franco 1916a, 7–8), and sometimes as imitation tantamount to theft (e.g. son. 101, 73–74). Other examples in which Petrarchist exponents are the victims of invective comprise sonnets 94, 96, and 100 (Franco 1916a, 69; 70; 73), in which the Petrarchist lyricists Tullia d'Aragona and Vittoria Colonna, on the one hand, and the Petrarch commentators Sebastiano Fausto da Longiano, Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo and Alessandro Vellutello, on the other, are exposed to ridicule.

In other sonnets, satire against Petrarchist poetry takes up elements of Petrarchist poetry itself. Syntagms and whole verses from Petrarch's poems, which stem primarily from the Canzoniere but also in part from the Trionfi, are placed in an obscene context of meaning, through which they are subjected to a fundamental reinterpretation. Sonnet 5 of the Priapea can be cited here as an example:


The invocation of the Muses at the beginning of the sonnet is based on Petrarch's Nel cor pien d'amarissima dolcezza, a capitolo that has come to be regarded as a preliminary draft of the Triumphus Fame (Petrarch 1951, 564).<sup>56</sup> While the first two verses of the sonnet closely resemble the original, thus clearly marking the reference to Petrarch, Franco's obscene reinterpretation of the single elements taken from the capitolo becomes increasingly clear in the verses that follow. The verb "bagnarsi", which in Petrarch's capitolo is connected to the rising and setting sun (cf. v. 18 there), alludes in Franco's sonnet to masturbation (v. 3), with which "fantasia" (v. 11), poetic inspiration, is equated.

Cf. for example Francesco Petrarca: Rime, Trionfi e poesie latine. A cura di Ferdinando Neri, Guido Martellotti, Enrico Bianchi, Natalino Sapegno. Milano, Napoli: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore 1951, 564.

The "fatti gloriosi e magni", that Petrarch's Trionfo della Fama subsequently deals with, refer to sexual act in Franco's sonnet. The parody of Petrarch is thus based on the use of Petrarchan linguistic material in an obscene context, whereby the former undergoes a fundamental reinterpretation.

The proportion of Petrarchan elements varies between the individual sonnets. In some poems, a verse by Petrarch serves as a starting point at the beginning of the text as, for example, in sonnet 190 (Franco 1916a, 133), in which the famous verse "O bella man, che mi distringi il core" serves as a prelude to a poem about masturbation. This is contrasted with sonnets that unexpectedly lead into a Petrarchan verse: in sonnet 193, for example, a discourse upon ejaculation addressed to the "donne" is surprisingly followed by the verse "tal frutto nasce di cotal radice" (Franco 1916a, son. 35; v. 14), which concludes Petrarch's sonnet Mirando 'l sol de' begli occhi sereno (Canzoniere CLXXIII). Other sonnets, in turn, consist of a set of Petrarchan verses of different provenance, assembled into a sonnet as in a Centone poem (e.g. Franco 1916a, 71, son. 97). The procedures of reference to Petrarchan poems outlined here are common in Petrarchist poetry of the Cinquecento, including, for example, Bembo's sonnet Moderati desiri, immenso ardore, in which the model reference is marked by a Petrarch quotation in the last verse, or the Centone poems of Iacopo Sannazzaro. Franco's Priapea thus imitates procedures that underlie Petrarchist poetry but applies them under different auspices to construct explicitly anti-classicist, obscene sonnets, which run counter to the Petrarchist concept of love. The imitative procedure that underlies Petrarchan lyricism is thereby subverted by degrading the source text to mere linguistic and motivic material, which can be adapted to quite heterogeneous content matter.

In addition to the cases presented thus far, in which the original context of meaning of quotations from Petrarch is subjected to a fundamental reinterpretation, in order to establish a distance from the Petrarchist model, there is an affirmative use of Petrarchan elements in sonnets 73 and 96 (Franco 1916a, 54; 136). The aforementioned sonnets refer to the three 'Babylonian' sonnets of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (nos. CXXXVI–CXXXVIII), which are based on a political theme with their criticism of the corruption of the Church. In sonnets 73 and 195, Franco quotes these Petrarchan sonnets to satirise the pope and the clergy in general, and thus also thematically follows the template of the Babylon tryptic. Their satirical undertone does not collide with that of the original, but rather follows its equally satirical, rather comical and realistic tone. The affirmative reference to Petrarch throughout makes it clear that the distancing from Petrarchist poetry otherwise observable in the Priapea is not related to the model of Petrarch himself but the poetic practice of Petrarchism in the succession of Bembo. This is characterised as pretentious, artificial, and mechanically imitative, and therefore rejected.

### 1.4.6 Priapean elements in other examples of anti-classicist poetry

Besides Nicolò Franco's Priapea, Priapean elements can be found above all in Bernesque capitoli (cf. chap. 1.2), although these appear only in poems by Berni's successors and not in Berni's own capitoli. Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano composed a trilogy of capitoli around 1533 (Della fava, Della fava il secondo, Priapo), for which the ancient Carmina Priapea are a central point of reference. In the two encomiums dedicated to the fave, the eulogy on the field beans is interwoven with themes and motifs from the poetry of Priapus. This combination was favoured because the beans mentioned in the two capitoli serve as metaphors for the male genitalia and thus create associations with the oversized phallus of Priapus, the god of fertility. In the second bean capitolo, both a certain ambiguity surrounding the subject matter of the praises sung in the poem and more specifically Priapean elements are used for a degrading re-reading of the myth of the Silver Age. According to the myth, the invention of agriculture falls into this era following the Golden Age. The capitolo thus presents a series of gods as the inventors of various crops, with Priapus credited with the invention of the beans praised in the poem. Among the figures who appear in the capitolo as visitors to the garden of Priapus and worshippers of fave are deities of the Greco-Roman pantheon. The sexual level of meaning, which is evident at this point, makes the obscene degradation of ancient myths especially clear:


This kind of reinterpretation is subsequently extended to other myths and legends of Roman history. For example, the success of the robbery of the Sabine women is attributed to the miraculous effect of the fave, as is the rise of the gens fabia. The obscene level of meaning underlying the chapter further enhances the comic effect of these retellings.

In the capitoli of the poeti berneschi, the adoption of Priapean elements is also interwoven with the use of certain legitimation strategies for the, at least apparent, revaluation of burlesque lyric poetry. The Priapean capitoli insist that Virgil also made use of the genre of Priapic lyric genre, thus appointing Virgil as the model for this type of capitolo. An example of this can be found in Giovanni Mauro d'Arcano's first bean capitolo:


The decisive factor for the invocation of Virgil in this context is the circumstance that the Carmina Priapea in the Cinquecento were often assigned to the Appendix vergiliana and thus regarded as Virgil's work. The legitimation strategy outlined above is reinforced in Mauro d'Arcano's capitoli by the inclusion of other texts by Virgil. Thus, the second Capitolo della fava contains passages that can be understood as a burlesque transposition of parts of the Georgica, while the beginning of the Capitolo di Priapo alludes to the Aeneid. Through the legitimation strategies described above, the burlesque capitoli – despite the obvious stylistic differences – seemingly place themselves on the same level as the Virgilian texts they allude to. The legitimation strategies employed thus correspond to a re-evaluation of classical authorities, whose model function is despoiled of its mythical character by being invoked in an inappropriate, burlesque context.

#### 1.4.7 Conclusions

In Nicolò Franco's Priapea, individual textual and genre references to Latin Priapic poetry serve as point of departure for an anti-court polemic that runs thematically through the entire collection. This is linked to the opposition to genres of high poetry such as Petrarchist love poetry and epic poetry evident in the sonnets of the Priapea. These genres are associated with the sphere of the court, whose affectation and mendacity are presented as a negative antithesis to the obscene genuineness of the Priapea.

In Bernesque capitoli on the other hand, the Priapus theme and metaphor serve as a starting point for an obscene reinterpretation of ancient myths and legends. More strongly than in Franco's Priapea, the capitoli emphasise the ancient origins of the Priapic lyric, from which the model gains legitimacy. At the same time, the capitoli insist that Virgil also worked in this genre. The literary authority of Virgil, however, does not appear inviolable in the capitoli, as his works are parodied in individual poems. All in all, both literary authorities and classical myths are despoiled of their mythical character.

### 1.5 Invective I – Pasquinades

Unlike an expression like poesia burlesca, the term 'invective' was not widely used in the Cinquecento. However, several examples of anti-classicist poetry can be assigned to a discursive type that can be aptly described by this concept. Genres like the pasquinade and the tenzone share the moment of vituperium ad personam that is constitutive of invectives. This feature especially characterises those pasquinades, in which the invective is directed primarily against political figures and the clergy. In addition to pasquinades, a second type of invective, that takes up features of the medieval tenzone, appears in the Cinquecento. Nicolò Franco's Rime contro Pietro Aretino belong to this group. Both these invective poems and the pasquinades adopt a comic-burlesque, low style and use satirical devices. Such features are absent from Cornelio Castaldi's capitolo Udite, imitatori del Petrarca. However, since this poem equally takes the form of a polemical attack against a particular group of authors, it will also be discussed in the present section.

In addition to the invectives mentioned above, other examples of this genre can be found in the poetry of the Cinquecento, including, for example Maffio Venier's invective poems against Veronica Franco and her response capitoli (Venier 1956), or Francesco Berni's polemical sonnets against political and ecclesiastical rulers.<sup>57</sup> The present account is limited to the study of invectives from the repertoire of lyric poetry that can be associated with explicit anticlassicism because of their (antithetical) reference to classicist models.

Examples of political invective are the sonnets Un papato composto di rispetti and Può far il ciel però, papa Chimenti, written as a pasquinade. Attacks ad personam can be found, for example, in the sonetto Contro a Pietro Aretino (Tu ne dirai e farai tante e tante) and in the sonnet Contro a M. Pietro Alcionio (Una mula sbiadata, dommaschina).

Pasquinades are anonymous poems that used to be attached to the so-called statue of Pasquino. This Roman torso, which had received the popular name of Pasquino for reasons unknown, had been placed in 1501 at a corner of the Orsini Palace (now Palazzo Braschi) in Rome.58 In addition to Pasquino, other 'talking statues' (statue parlanti) such as Marforio, who enters into dialogue with Pasquino in some texts, appeared in Rome during the Cinquecento. Texts created in connection with other statues are also commonly referred to as pasquinades.

While Latin pasquinades, written in epigram form, were predominant at the beginning, vernacular (and partly dialectal) pasquinades became increasingly important in the first decades of the Cinquecento, mainly in form of sonnets of standard length or with cauda. This kind of genre development resulted in an alteration of the content of the poems. Pasquinades increasingly took the form of politically motivated propaganda in which individual rulers, groups, or fractions were played off against each other (Firpo 1984, 603).

In addition to pasquinades in the narrow sense, which were meant to be posted on the statue of Pasquino, a second tradition of Pasquino poetry began to emerge, which was independent of reception in a specific pragmatic context and spread primarily in print. These texts, which belong to different genres, share themes and motifs with pasquinades in the narrow sense. However, they appear in forms such as dialogues, lamenti, frottole and correspondences in verse, which are longer than the sonnet predominant in pasquinades in the narrow sense. This change is also accompanied by a greater range of subject matter (Marzo in Pasquino e dintorni 1990, 12–17).

The present account deals exclusively with vernacular pasquinades. Central aspects of Latin pasquinades are only touched upon where they seem relevant to the contexts discussed here.

#### 1.5.1 Origins

Soon after its erection in 1501, the statue of Pasquino became a central figure of the celebrations during the Feast of Saint Mark (25 April). An annually established framework theme determined the act of dressing up Pasquino as a mythological figure as well as the subject of the poems, which was mostly chosen and made known by students and professors of Sapienza University in the earlier years. Members of the Curia were responsible – at least in the period from

Over time, the origin of the name was traced back to a tailor, a teacher, a barber and an innkeeper. No valid evidence has been found for any of these hypotheses (Romei 1995, 1–2).

1509 to 1520 – for the organisation of the festival. They also determined the selection of poems that would later be published in the form of official prints. Accordingly, political satire is rare in pasquinades of this period. Invectives in this phase rather refer to pedants than to rulers or the clergy.<sup>59</sup>

Today's perception of pasquinades is primarily shaped by vernacular pasquinades that became widespread between 1514 and 1515. During this period, the form of pasquinades as political invectives took an increasingly distinct shape. The target of the polemics expressed in them was primarily not social grievances, but the respective opposition party. Due to the lack of a morally motivated indignatio, the perception of pasquinades as satirical poetry remains questionable (Aquilecchia in Pasquinate romane 1983, XII). Even though these texts remained fundamentally anonymous, pasquinade writers achieved notoriety especially because of their activity in this genre. Antonio Lelio who integrated elements of Tuscan comic poetry (e.g. by Burchiello and Bellincioni) into his pasquinades, played a pioneering role in this regard. Pietro Aretino was especially active as a pasquinade writer after the papal conclave of 1521–1522, which elected Adrian VI as the new pope. His production had such an impact on the perception of the genre that Aretino as a figure became increasingly identified with that of Pasquino.60 The form of the more politically oriented pasquinades was not entirely new but could be traced back to Latin satires directed against the Curia, which were widespread in Rome as early as the thirteenth century (Romei 1995, 1).

Since 1526, pasquinade production began to decline both quantitatively and qualitatively. There were probably three reasons for this: Aretino's flight from Rome in the same year, the Sacco di Roma (1527) and Lelio's death before 1530 (Marucci 1995, 81). As early as in the 1530s, pasquinade-like poetry spread in Venice where the poems were mainly posted on the statue of the so-called Gobbo di Rialto, and in Florence, where they were attached to the statue of Porcellino. This production continued up until the seventeenth century. There is also evidence of pasquinade production in Milan and Genoa towards the end of the sixteenth century (Niccoli 2005, 43–44). In Northern Europe, pasquinades appealed to Celio Secondo Curione (Caelius Secundus Curio) and Ulrich von Hutten, who wrote Latin poems in this form against the Curia (Marucci in Pasquinate del Cinque e Seicento 1988, 13–21).

Marucci in Pasquinate romane 1983, XVII–XVIII; Marucci in Pasquinate del Cinque e Seicento 1988, 7–8; Romei 1995, 1–4; Marucci 1995, 71; Marzo 2007, 170–171.

Marucci 1995, 70–76; Romei 1995, 8–9; Aquilecchia in Pasquinate romane 1983, X.

#### 1.5.2 Text and edition history

Official printings commissioned by the organisers of the Feast of Saint Mark, handwritten edited anthologies, as well as isolated letters, collected manuscripts, and heterogeneous collections of lyric poems, served as sources for the Cinquecento pasquinade tradition (Marucci in Pasquinate romane 1983, 969). It is safe to assume that the official editions did not represent the full range of pasquinade production of the period, but corresponded to the selection criteria set by festival organisers and revealed in editorial prefaces (Aquilecchia in Pasquinate romane 1983, IX). The publication period of the annually published editions covers the period between 1509 and Pope Leo X's pontificate (1513–1521). During this pontificate, increasingly strident invective against the papacy led to 'official' pasquinade editions becoming rare and eventually ceasing to exist (Marucci in Pasquinate romane 1983, 995). While the official pasquinade prints appeared 'harmless' in terms of content and style, handwritten pasquinades, which are known to have been handed down, are characterised by satirically pointed stylistic features, themes, and motifs that are more strongly influenced by the Tuscan burlesque poetry of the Quattrocento (Aquilecchia in Pasquinate romane 1983, IX–X).

Numerous, predominantly anonymous texts in various genres circulated mainly in printed form, which referred thematically to pasquinades but were not meant to be posted on the statue of Pasquino: the capitolo Triompho della lussuria, di maestro Pasquino (Venice 1537), the Utilissimi Consigli de lo Eccellente Dottor plusquamperfetto Pasquino da Roma (Venice 1550), written in octaves, and the Latin distichs and vernacular sonnets by Luca Grillo.

In the field of modern text-critical editions, the two-volume edition of the Pasquinate romane by Valerio Marucci, Antonio Marzo, and Angelo Romano (1983), which is based on both the official Cinquecento prints and manuscript sources, deserves particular mention. This edition is complemented by Valerio Marucci's Pasquinate del Cinque e Seicento (1988), which incorporates additional sources both geographically (Rome, Florence, Venice) and chronologically. The editions Pasquino e dintorni (ed. Antonio Marzo, 1990) and Pasquinate, grillate, pelate e altro Cinquecento librario minore (ed. Chiara Lastraioli, 2012) are dedicated to the second tradition of pasquinismo that is, however, no longer directly associated with the statue of Pasquino.

#### 1.5.3 Research

Research has addressed both the Latin and Italian pasquinade tradition of the Cinquecento. In the field of Italian pasquinades, a broad area of research, which began to emerge as early on as in the nineteenth century and has continued into more recent scholarship, concerns the authorship of individual pasquinades.61 With the effort to produce modern critical editions of pasquinades in the 1980s, reconstructions of the chronological development of the genre also emerged, focusing primarily on the role of Aretino.62 Following the indexing of the Cinquecento pasquinades by modern textual scholarship, an examination of texts that were no longer tied to the statue of Pasquino but nevertheless shared features, themes, and motifs with pasquinades began to emerge.63 In addition, the distribution of pasquinade-like texts in other Italian cities has been studied sporadically.64 Other aspects to be found in research on pasquinades concern motif and thematic areas such as play in Pasquinade poetry (Romei 1993, 408–422), the Pasquino festival as a publication and reception space for Cinquecento pasquinades (Reynolds 1985, 1987, 1988), Pasquino iconography in edition and art history (Damianaki 2006; La Monica 2006), the relationship between Pasquino and Pietro Aretino's author-figure65 and the appearance of a Pasquino character in other genres such as comedy (Borsellino 1986, 442–446; Cairns 2006). The relationship between pasquinades and other genres such as satire and Macaronic poetry has also been analysed (Corsaro 2006; Faini 2006). In addition, the genre of pasquinades has been studied from a historical and anthropological perspective in relation to forms of anticlerical criticism in the sixteenth century (Niccoli 2005, 29–48; 111–119; 158–173). An outlook on chronological and geographical contexts, which are not dealt with in detail here, is provided by research contributions on Pasquinade poetry in the Seicento (Romei 2006b; Warwick 2006) as well as in modern languages other than Italian.66

#### 1.5.4 Analysis

Pasquinades, whose production and reception was directly linked to the Roman statue of Pasquino, are a form of poetry that thematises political and social

Rossi in Aretino 1891; Percopo 1896; Romei 1986; Pignatti 2001; Larivaille 2005, 13–29.

Aquilecchia in Pasquinate romane 1983, IX–XVI; Marucci in Pasquinate romane 1983, XVII–XXII; Marucci in Pasquinate del Cinque e Seicento 1988, 7–22; Romei 1995; Marucci 1995; Larivaille 1997, 57–79; Orvieto/Brestolini 2000, 239–247; Marzo 2007.

Marzo in Pasquino e dintorni 1990, 7–18; Lastraioli in Pasquinate, grillate 2012, passim; Larivaille 2006; Dalmas 2006; Mevoli 2006.

Marzo 2006; Garavelli 2006; Masi 2006; Spagnolo 2006.

Larivaille 1980, 45–53; Procaccioli 2006; Faini 2017, Lastraioli 2021.

Parkin 2006; Panizza 2006; Provvidera 2006; Lastraioli 2006; Dingemanse/Drees 2006.

events. Explicit references to specific literary models or metaliterary reflections are not to be found in these poems. Whereas pasquinades adopt elements from earlier textual traditions and genres, such as fifteenth-century Tuscan comic poetry, they are not discussed on a metaliterary-theoretical level.

The same applies to references to classical mythology, which are frequently found in pasquinades. They concern the statue of Pasquino, who is dressed up as a mythological figure (e.g. Hercules, Janus, Apollo) and provides the thematic framework for the Pasquino festival each year. Descriptions of and references to Pasquino's mythical attire are often linked to allusions to the political situation of Rome and Italy. Mythological figures and motifs are thus torn from the sacrosanct sphere of myth and placed in an extratextual context. However, this characteristic of the pasquinades is not linked to an opposition to dominant literary models but to the genre's origin and reception.

Individual pasquinades refer to elements from Petrarch's poems but do not parody them. Pasquinades that thematise the act of mourning the death of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, for example, comprise reminiscences from the poems of the Canzoniere that touch upon the theme of mourning (cf. pasquinades 30, 31 in Pasquinate romane 1983, 26–27). Another example is the dialogue-sonnet Dove vai, vecchierel, cosí turbato (Pasquinate romane 1983, 191–192): the reference to one of Petrarch's Babylonian sonnets (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta CXXXVIII) in the last tercet does not contrast with the content of the pasquinade but seems appropriate to the lamentation about the wretched state of the Church expressed in it. The references to Petrarch in the pasquinades thus lack the contrast between the invoked model and the target context that creates a parodic effect in other Cinquecento lyric genres.

Scholars have considered Aretino's pasquinades as an example of his anticlassicist and phenomenological reflections. The 'realism' of the pasquinades would thus be a form of implementation of the naturalness of writing, which Aretino opposed to classicist poetics of imitation in his manifesto-like letter to Nicolò Franco, dated June 25, 1537.67 However, the naturalness that Aretino defended in his letter cannot be compared with what today would be called realism, but is rather connected to an original, independent treatment of literary models (cf. chap. 1.11). The strong reference of these pasquinades to the extraliterary realm is related to the function of the genre as a means of political invective. Questions associated with the status of classicist models remain, however, excluded from the poems themselves.

Marzo 2007, 187–189; similarly argued by Marucci 1995, 85–86. Cf. on Aretino's letter to Franco chap. 1.11.

A wide range of parodic strategies can be found in texts of various genres that were thematically and stylistically related to pasquinades in their narrow sense but were not written in direct connection with the statue of Pasquino. Among the variety of texts, lyric examples will be discussed here in particular. The form and content of Trionfo della lussuria di Maestro Pasquino (1537)<sup>68</sup> is inspired by Petrarch's Trionfi. The I, identifiable with Pasquino, describes the victory chariot of lussuria, which carries figures such as courtiers, ruffiani and prostitutes, who are punished for their sacrilegious actions. The characters of the poem correspond to a repertoire that also appears in other comic texts of the Cinquecento. Pasquino is accompanied in this kind of vision of the afterlife by the character of Zoppino, who also appears in Aretino's comedies and dialogues (cf. chap. 1.9). On the linguistic and stylistic level, the Trionfo della lussuria is characterised by a stile grave, which closely resembles that of the parodied text. The parodic effect thus arises from the contrast between Petrarchist form and style on the one hand and burlesque cast of characters on the other.

The parodic use of elements of Petrarchan poetry is also evident in the poem in octaves, Pasquino cerca il suo naso (1550?).69 The text uses the metaphor of the nose as a phallus, which was widespread in comic poetry of the Cinquecento.70 The noseless Pasquino sends his servant to various places in Rome to search for the missing body part, thereby praising the virtues of a broad nose. The reference to Petrarchan poetry is most pronounced in the first octave of the poem, in which the praise of the nose is introduced by an allusion to a sonnet by Petrarch. Moreover, throughout the poem, other classical elements, such as authorial figures and works of ancient Latin and Greek literature (Homer, Ovid, the Iliad), are associated with the obscene content of the text. Unlike the Trionfo della lussuria, the parodic use of elements from classicist-Petrarchist literature is more evident here. Whereas in Trionfo della lussuria, the parody arises from the contrast between form and language on the one hand and the cast of characters and themes on the other, in Pasquino cerca il suo naso, classicist elements are placed in a thematic and linguistic context that is at first glance recognisable as comic. Not only does the motif of the nose as a phallic metaphor point in this direction, but the simple, unpretentious linguistic style does as well, which – in contrast to the elevated language of the Trionfo della lussuria – clearly marks the text as lowburlesque.

Included in Pasquino e dintorni (1990, 10–11).

Included in Pasquino e dintorni (1990, 11).

Cf. for example the Nasea by Annibal Caro, or the Capitolo del Naso by Lodovico Dolce.

#### 1.5.5 Conclusions

The constituent features of pasquinades are strongly tied to their immediate context of origin and reception, which is characterised by opposition to individuals or political parties. The pronounced reference to extratextual events and figures is also conditioned by the function of pasquinades as a means of political polemics. Consequently, there are no metaliterary reflections or determinations of position vis-à-vis other literary models. Significantly, the figure of Pasquino is placed in the service of the parody of Petrarch only in those texts that were not written in direct connection with the statue of Pasquino. In this second, heterogeneous tradition of Pasquino poetry, parody of literary models takes the place of political invective, at least in the examples presented thus far. By detaching these texts from a strongly extra-literary context of origin, the figure of Pasquino clearly became more linked to the parody of literary models.

### 1.6 Invective II – Nicolò Franco: Rime contro Pietro Aretino

#### 1.6.1 Origins

Nicolò Franco's Rime contro Pietro Aretino is a collection of poems first published in 1541 together with his Priapea. The general theme of the collection, already evident in the title, is the invective against the author-figure Pietro Aretino. The quarrel between Franco and Aretino that preceded the publication of the book served as an extratextual occasion for it. However, the Rime does not extensively discuss the possible causes of the quarrel. The 278 poems of the editio princeps were expanded to 298 in the third edition, which appeared in 1548 under Franco's supervision.<sup>71</sup> The last version of the collection comprises 295 sonnets, a caudate sonnet, the Testamento del Delicato (consisting of stanze brevi), and the accompanying epitaphio, written in octaves.

The collection is divided into two parts, which vary in style and themes. Whereas the first part uses features of the medieval tenzone, the second part is

Bruni 1997, 128; Bruni's reconstruction is the only clue for determining the number of poems contained in the first edition. In the only existing copy of the 1541 edition, pages are missing, making it impossible to determine the total number of poems (Falardo 2008, 298).

characterised by parodic borrowings from pastoral poetry, which are embedded in the framing theme of the invective against Aretino. In both parts, the poems are arranged in small, thematically organised cycles (for example according to the recipient of the poem or the theme it addresses).

The reasons for the conflict between Nicolò Franco and Pietro Aretino, which the invective in the Rime contro Pietro Aretino refers to, remain partly misunderstood. Franco worked for Aretino in Venice between 1536 and 1538. He contributed to the publication of Aretino's Lettere and probably also translated for him, since Aretino knew no Latin. Following the publication of Aretino's Lettere in 1538, Franco also published a collection of letters in 1539 titled Pistole vulgari (cf. chap. 1.11). It seems thus plausible that the competitive relationship, which developed between Aretino and Franco, caused the conflict. In addition to the collection of poems discussed here, Aretino's letters also bear witness to the dispute between the two authors.72 However, sonnets directed against Franco, as mentioned in the poem Aretin mio, non vaglia a scorucciare (Franco 1916b, 11; 17) at the beginning of the first part of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino, have not been handed down (Sicardi in Franco 1916b, XIV). In 1539, Franco also became the victim of a knife attack provoked by Aretino's protégé Ambrogio degli Eusebi, whom Aretino supported in the ensuing court case (Bruni 1997, 126). Following the incident, Franco left Venice and, after stops in Milan and Padua, reached Casale Monferrato in 1540, where he encountered poets of the local Accademia degli Argonauti. <sup>73</sup> It was also in Casale that both the first edition of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino and the Priapea were published in 1541 by Giovanni Antonio Guidone.<sup>74</sup> The publication of the text further sharpened the conflict between Franco and Aretino. On March 11, 1542, Aretino wrote a letter (contained in Aretino 1998, 347–348), in which he accuses Sigismondo Fanzino, the governor of Casale Monferrato, of giving Franco protection and allowing the publication of the text (Bruni 1997, 130).

#### 1.6.2 Text and edition history

According to some typographical sources, the edition of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino, published in 1541 by Giovanni Antonio Guidone, was printed in Turin,

 Cf. on the Accademia degli Argonauti Oberto 2016, chap. 1.3 "Die Rime Maritime di M. Nicolo Franco et d'altri diversi spiriti, dell'Accademia de gli Argonauti (Mantova 1547)".

Cf. for example the letter from Pietro Aretino to Lodovico Dolce, dated October 7, 1539, in Aretino 1998, 147.

Sicardi in Franco 1916b, VI–XVIII; Bruni 1997, 124–127; Martelli 2003, 860.

but likely originated from Guidone's workshop in Casale Monferrato. The first edition was long considered lost until a copy of it was found in the All Souls College Library in Oxford in 2006 (Falardo 2008, 319). Of the second edition, probably published in 1546, neither copies nor accurate information about the date and place of publication are known (Bruni 1997, 131–133). One copy of the third edition, published in Basel in 1548 and authorised by Franco, is preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze. The paucity of sources is at least partly because Franco's work was already placed on the Index in 1557 (Bruni 1997, 128). Following the manuscripts, Roberto L. Bruni managed to reconstruct the arrangement of the poems in the first two editions (1997, 134–143). The 1548 edition was expanded by 20 additional pieces in relation to the previous two editions. In addition, whereas the earlier division of the collection into five parts was replaced by an organisation that divided the collection into two parts, no relevant changes were made in the sequence of individual texts. Further differences between the first two and the third edition concern the individuals to whom individual sonnets were dedicated. Names associated with Casale Monferrato, which predominated in the first two versions of the Rime, were left out from the 1548 edition or replaced by those with whom Franco was in contact at the time (he had left Casale in 1546) (Bruni 1997, 134–141).

The only modern edition of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino was published by Enrico Sicardi in 1916 and is based on a handwritten copy of the 1548 edition. Concerning the structure of the collection and enumeration of individual poems, the present discussion draws on this edition, which is also the last, most comprehensive version of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino authorised by Franco.

#### 1.6.3 Research

Although the Rime contro Pietro Aretino are among the texts written by Nicolò Franco that have been paid relatively little attention, there has been an increased interest in this text among researchers, especially since 2000. In addition to the edition history (Bruni 1997; Falardo 2008), the relationship between Nicolò Franco and Pietro Aretino, which forms the textual background for the creation of the collection, has also been studied (Martelli 2003; Procaccioli 2021, 508–516). Further, the Rime have also been analysed in relation to other texts or lyric genres such as invectives or the tenzone (Crimi 2016; Orvieto/Brestolini 2000, 253), the genre of pastoral poetry, including the variant known as poesia pescatoria (Pignatti 2007; Falardo 2004) and sonnets by Antonio Brocardo (Caterino 2012).

#### 1.6.4 Analysis

The Rime contro Pietro Aretino is divided into two parts that basically refer to two different genres in terms of content and style. The first part is characterised by borrowings from the genre of tenzone, which spread in Italy since the thirteenth century under the influence of Provençal poetry. Examples include sonnets by Rustico di Filippo, who serves as a model in this field (Celotto 2015, 71–72) and the tenzone between Dante Alighieri and Forese Donati or Matteo Franco and Luigi Pulci. On a formal level, the genre is characterised by use of the sonnet form, and, on a stylistic and thematic level, by irony, obscene allusions, trivial language, and the degradation of elements of high culture. The defamation of the addressee is sometimes combined with elements of political polemic (Celotto 2015, 72).

The exemplary function of the tenzone regarding the Rime contro Pietro Aretino becomes particularly apparent on the thematic level. Just like in Rustico di Filippo's poems, the attack against Aretino becomes apparent through a polemical form of address in the opening verse of the sonnet:


The metaphor of war, with which the invective is staged as a battle, can also be traced back to the model of the tenzone. <sup>75</sup> The same applies to sexual insults.<sup>76</sup> The tenzone can also serve as an example that establishes a link between personal invective and political or social polemics, as it is sometimes found in the Rime. For example, these two themes are intertwined in sonnets 54–67 (Franco

Crimi 2016; cf. on the characteristics of medieval tenzone Celotto 2015, 70–74.

As, for example, in sonnet 23 (Franco 1916b, 13–14; 23).

1916b, 27–33), which critically address the prencipi. In the first sonnets of this group, the justification for the attack on the princes is still closely related to the framing theme of the invective against Aretino. They are accused of having given Aretino protection. From sonnet 60 onwards, the polemic shifts to a more general level, accusing the rulers of acting injustly towards authors in need of their material support. In sonnets 66–67, this criticism culminates in political partisanship for the French king and against the Emperor Charles V, who was supported by Aretino.

In the second part of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino, the framing theme of the invective against Aretino is linked to the parody of pastoral rhetoric.<sup>77</sup> The invective is staged here as rivalry between two shepherds, surrounded by a bucolically stylised landscape and a repertoire of mythological figures characteristic of the genre. In some sonnets, the reference to pastoral rhetoric is made in a seemingly unbroken manner (e.g. in sonnet 207) so that the parody remains recognisable only through its being embedded in the thematic context of the invective. In other poems, bucolic elements are distorted into the ridiculous and obscene, as in sonnet 237:


The degradation affects both the mythological cast of characters (the morning goddess Aurora uses reddish make-up, her husband Tithonos suffers from

The parody partly draws on the so-called poesia pescatoria, a subgenre of pastoral poetry in which characters, themes and motifs refer not to the world of shepherds but that of fishermen. Following the publication of Iacopo Sannazaro's Eclogae piscatoriae (1526), this variant of pastoral poetry spread in the sixteenth century and was also taken up by Nicolò Franco in some of the pastoral sonnets of his Pistole vulgari (Pignatti 2007, 153).

bladder weakness) and Aretino, who is defamed here as a donkey-herder. The obscene content of the sonnet, which adds to the distortion of bucolic elements, is couched in sexually explicit language. Not all the sonnets in the second part of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino feature the technique of obscene reinterpretation as strongly as the example given above. Whereas in some poems the obscene content is only implied, in others the degradation is restricted to Aretino's character. In the second part of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino, manifold references to pastoral rhetoric can thus be found, ranging from its seemingly unbroken realisation to a parodic distancing through emphasised obscenity.

In addition to the references to the genre of tenzone and pastoral poetry discussed above, the Rime contro Pietro Aretino also contains isolated references to Petrarchist poetry. These take the form of a parody of Petrarch only in sonnets 5 and 48 (Franco 1916b, 5; 24), realised through the invocation of elements of canzoniere in a thematically banal or obscene and stylistically low context. However, affirmative references to Petrarchist poetry, as presented in sonnets 13–15 and 202 (Franco 1916b, 9–10; 101), are more common. These poems draw upon the framing theme of invective against Aretino and are addressed as correspondence sonnets or encomiums to various recipients named in the text. The alternately parodic or affirmative recourse to Petrarchist elements thus corresponds to an aptum relation between the poem's theme and the style chosen in each case. While poems in which the invective against Aretino takes a central position can parody Petrarch corresponding to the comic character of these texts, the correspondence sonnets are characterised by the stile grave whose inventory also includes the affirmative use of Petrarchist elements.

The aptum relation is particularly evident in sonnets 200–204, addressed to the poet Giovanni Francesco Bellentani at the end of the first part of the Rime contro Pietro Aretino (Franco 1916b, 100–102). In these sonnets, written in the stile grave, the lyrical I seeks to discard the "scriver d'ira" and "ragionar di sdegno" (son. 200, v. 14) as well as the related "aspro stile" (son. 201, v. 13) to surrender to a "moderno stile" (son. 200, v. 11) and to "beltade" (son. 202, v. 6). The use of low style is thus not programmatically absolute in the Rime, for instance in the sense of a consistent anti-Petrarchist polemic. Both the stile grave and the low style rather appear side by side, and the choice made in each case depends on the subject treated.

#### 1.6.5 Conclusions

Parody of Petrarchist poetry plays a subordinate role in the Rime contro Pietro Aretino. Correspondence sonnets and encomiums that deviate from the framework theme of the invective are characterised by affirmative references to Petrarchist poetry. The alternately parodic or affirmative recourse to Petrarchist elements and the respective preference for the stile grave or low style are exclusively conditioned by the respective subject treated.

Related to the choice of the Provençal genre of tenzone, a degradation of elements of high culture occurs in the Rime contro Pietro Aretino. Quotation of these elements is characterised by a parody of pastoral rhetoric culminating in its obscene distortion. Depending on the type of reference, personal invective or a genuine social polemic can play a role.

### 1.7 Invective III – Cornelio Castaldi: Udite, imitatori del Petrarca

#### 1.7.1 Origins

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, literary-historical accounts and thematic studies have cited Cornelio Castaldi's capitolo Udite, imitatori del Petrarca as an example of poetry that programmatically demonstrates the anti-Petrarchism of the Cinquecento. The terzina poem, which circulated only in manuscript form in the Cinquecento and did not appear in print until 1757, addresses Petrarch's imitators directly in a polemical manner, accusing them of artlessness and a lack of imagination. According to it, although Petrarch can serve as a model, an imitation of Petrarch alone is insufficient. Rather, an independent approach to ancient and modern models should be sought, without limiting oneself to a single one of them. Ancient poetry is cited as proof of this, where no monotonous imitation of a single model author can be found.

The capitolo is a direct attack on Petrarch's imitators. However, apart from the clearly polemical opening formula, there are hardly any elements in the capitolo that transfer the invective in terms of content to the stylistic form of the text. Obscene allusions or means of verbal aggression that are characteristic of invectives are absent from Castaldi's poem. Furthermore, the images in the text to which the poetic practice of Petrarch's imitators is compared (such as "garrule Piche" in verse 9, or a child's first attempts at writing in vv. 73–81), do not attain the severity and the contempt of the opponent that is characteristic of a text like the Rime contro Pietro Aretino.

The exact date of the capitolo's composition cannot be determined. Argumentative and stylistic similarities between Castaldi's poem and Angelo Poliziano's epistle concerning the imitation of Cicero make it possible to situate the Capitolo contro i petrarchisti within the debate on the imitation of ancient models that developed in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (Baldacci 1974, 39–43). The controversy over imitatio had developed primarily among the humanists of the fifteenth century and revolved mostly around the question of whether the Ciceronian model or an eclectic orientation toward multiple models was to be preferred in prose. This polemic reached a climax in the exchange of letters between Angelo Poliziano and Paolo Cortese, in which the former advocated the eclectic model and the latter opted for Ciceronianism. The debate intensified when Gianfrancesco Pico, in a letter dated 1512 and addressed to Pietro Bembo, questioned not only the imitation of a single model but imitation itself. At the same time, in a partly contradictory argument, Pico ranked aemulatio above imitatio. Bembo responded in early 1513 by rejecting the eclectic form of imitation of various models, only accepting Virgil and Cicero as models to be imitated. At the same time, he abolished the juxtaposition of imitatio and aemulatio sketched by Pico, declaring the latter a necessary component of poetic imitation (Alfano et al. 2018, 47–54). Castaldi's capitolo thus presumably represents an attempt to apply the debate around Ciceronianism to the terrain of vernacular poetry (Baldacci 1974, 43).

Castaldi's poem seems to have received hardly any attention in the Cinquecento, especially since it circulated exclusively in manuscript form and probably only in the Venetian environment (Balduino 2008, 6). The only textual evidence that alludes to Castaldi's position vis-à-vis Petrarchism is a Latin poem by Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli published in 1505. The text praises Castaldi's Latin poetry but condemns his vernacular verse for distancing itself from the imitation of Petrarch and Dante.78 It remains uncertain whether Augurelli's poem refers directly to the Capitolo contro i petrarchisti; either way, it testifies that Castaldi's early critical examination of the technique of imitating Petrarch in vernacular poetry preceded the publication of Augurelli's Latin verses. In the practice of poetry, including that of its author himself, however, the capitolo does not seem to have had any consequences, since Castaldi's own poems are generally marked by clear Petrarchan borrowings (Balduino 2008, 13–17).

#### 1.7.2 Text and edition history

In the sixteenth century, the Capitolo contro i petrarchisti circulated exclusively in handwritten form and probably only in the Venetian area.<sup>79</sup> Only a few of

Cf. Ioannis Aurelii Augurelli Carmina, Venetiis, In aedibus Aldi, 1505, Iambicus liber, I 23, c. c3; qtd. in Balduino 2008, 12, not. 14.

An overview of the existing Cinquecento manuscripts is given in Castaldi 1899 (II, XL–LIII).

Castaldi's poems appeared in printed anthologies in the Cinquecento.<sup>80</sup> The Capitolo contro i petrarchisti was first published in 1757 in the edition of Castaldi's Italian and Latin poems edited by Tommaso Giuseppe Farsetti. This was followed in 1899 by an expanded edition by Giambattista Ferracina. The capitolo discussed here also appeared in 1829 as the only text by Castaldi in the appendix of an edition of Pierio Valeriano's La infelicità dei letterati (De litterorum infelicitate, written around 1529). More recently, the capitolo was published in the anthology Texte zum Antipetrarkismus, edited in 1970 by Johannes Hösle.

#### 1.7.3 Research

Since Arturo Graf's (1888, 60–61) remarks on anti-Petrarchism, Cornelio Castaldi's capitolo Udite, imitatori del Petrarca has been declared the prime example of anti-Petrarchist poetry of the Cinquecento. This appraisal of the text has long held; for example, Johannes Hösle's 1970 anthology Texte zum Antipetrarkismus places Castaldi's capitolo first (1–5). Recent research – even though scant – has produced more nuanced results. On the one hand, Castaldi's polemic has been anchored in the debate on imitatio of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; on the other, the poem's limited programmatic impact, both in Castaldi's own work and in early Cinquecento poetry more generally, has been emphasised (Baldacci 1974, 39–43; Balduino 2008).

#### 1.7.4 Analysis

Unlike other texts discussed here, Castaldi's Capitolo contro i petrarchisti does not display any techniques of parodying literary models. The author's opposition to an exclusive imitation of Petrarch is expressed through a directly formulated polemical attack, which uses a middle style without obscene elements:

Udite, imitatori del Petrarca, Udite servi di vane parole Che più stimate i remi che la barca: Per starvi accanto di quel vivo sole E per inopia seminando urtiche, Non vi sperate di coglier viole. I vostri studi e le vostre fatiche, A chi ben mira, vi fan parer quali

Cf. Castaldi 1899 (II, XXXIV–XXXV).

Alla voce d'altrui garrule piche. Che vi vale esser all'Aquile uguali Di forma altera e d'onorate piume, E fuor del nido non spiegar mai l'ali? Leggo talor tutt'un vostro volume Da capo a piedi, ch'io non vi discerno, D'arte o d'ingegno un semivivo lume. (Castaldi 1899, 102, vv. 1–15)

Both in the choice of individual motifs and the structure of argumentation, Castaldi's capitolo shows connections to Angelo Poliziano's epistle to Paolo Cortese, in which the former defends the eclectic imitation of several models against a onesided orientation towards Cicero (Baldacci 1974, 41–42). On this basis, Luigi Baldacci reads the capitolo as a manifestation of anti-Petrarchism in the early Cinquecento, related to the more general polemic surrounding the status of imitatio, as it developed especially in Neo-Latin literature in relation to Ciceronianism. Castaldi's capitolo thus represents an isolated attempt to transfer the positions of anti-Ciceronianism to anti-Petrarchism (Baldacci 1974, 40–43).

#### 1.7.5 Conclusions

Cornelio Castaldi's capitol is the only example of poetry discussed here that expresses a polemic against Petrarchism in a serious style whilst at the same time pointing to an alternative, better model: one-sided orientation to Petrarch is opposed to the eclectic imitation of several models. Castaldi's poem, however, had no direct consequences. It was received with little or no attention in the Cinquecento and none of the positions formulated in the capitol can be found in other poems by the author. Thus, it cannot be assumed that opposing stances against Petrarchism in Cinquecento poetry were inspired by Castaldi.

### 1.8 Pietro Aretino: Sonetti lussuriosi (Sonetti sopra i 'XVI modi')

#### 1.8.1 Origins

Pietro Aretino's Sonetti lussuriosi are a collection of 16 caudate sonnets originally published together with erotic wood engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi. The latter were based on drawings made in 1524 by the painter Giulio Romano. The date of the creation and first publication of the Sonetti lussuriosi is disputed, especially since Aretino's complete works were placed on the index in 1557/1559 and no copy of the first edition of the collection is known to exist (Romei in Aretino 2019, 30). Possible dates for the editio princeps range from 1524 to 1537 and there is also no consensus on the original title. It can only be said that later editions refer to the collection as Sonetti lussuriosi.

The sonnets, primarily dialogical, take the form of dialogues between sexually active couples about their preferred practices. With Vasari's description of the Vita di Marcantonio Bolognese, narratives about the origins of the Sonetti lussuriosi began to emerge as early as the sixteenth century, although they provide few solid facts. What we know for certain is that the painter Giulio Romano produced a series of erotic drawings in 1524, based on which Marcantonio Raimondi made copper engravings. The rapid dissemination of the latter led the papal Datario Giovan Matteo Giberti to arrest Raimondi and have the engravings destroyed. Pietro Aretino, who was at the height of his Roman career at the time, intervened on behalf of the engraver and secured his release (Romei in Aretino 2019, 5–15). It is impossible to determine when the Sonetti lussuriosi were exactly created and published together with the wood engravings based on Raimondi's copper engravings.81 Accounts that have long prevailed, according to which the publication of the work was linked to an assassination attempt on Aretino ordered by Giberti and to the author's flight from Rome, have proved unsound (Larivaille 1997, 108–112; Romei in Aretino 2019, 16–21).

#### 1.8.2 Text and edition history

Only one copy has been handed down of the Sonetti lussuriosi that was published in the sixteenth century. This is a privately owned edition in Geneva without a title page and colophon, which contains no information about the date of publication, place or publisher.82 The copy does probably not correspond to the first edition but constitutes a subsequent, partially defective contrafaction of the text

The printing technology of the time did not permit to combine copper engravings and text so that wood engravings had to be made for printing (Romei 2020, 78).

This circumstance has also triggered a discussion about the title of the collection of poems. While the designation Sonetti lussuriosi has become established in the textual tradition, Giovanni Aquilecchia and Angelo Romano (in Aretino 1992, 295–296) propose the title Sonetti sopra i 'XVI modi' based on Aretino's dedicatory letter to Battista Zatti. For reasons of conciseness – and also because Aquilecchia's and Romano's proposal is not uncontroversial (Romei in Aretino 2019, 153–154) – the title Sonetti lussuriosi is used in the present account.

(Aquilecchia and Romano in Aretino 1992, 292; Romei in Aretino 2019, 5–6). Despite the shortcomings described above, it represents the only testimony in which the original form of the book as a picture-text combination is preserved. Both later manuscript and printed versions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries combine the poems included in the Cinquecento edition with other sonnets that either belong to Aretino himself or an apocryphal tradition (Romei in Aretino 2019, 109–129; Romei 2019).

Due to the ambivalent source situation, even the modern text-critical editions of the Sonetti lussuriosi propose various reconstructions of the original text structure. The edition of the Sonetti lussuriosi published in 1992 as part of the Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Pietro Aretino and edited by Giovanni Aquilecchia and Angelo Romano adopts the structure of the Genevese copy, which is considered the only reliable textual source. The edition also includes a reproduction of this Cinquecento print, which allows the reception of the sonnets in connection with the accompanying images. In 1996, Alcide Bonneau and Paul Larivaille published an edition with a French translation of the poems. Danilo Romei's edition, published in 2019, draws not only on the sixteenth-century print but also on later textual sources to compensate for deficiencies in the Genevese copy and to fill in missing parts.

#### 1.8.3 Research

The incomplete sources have led to intensive research on this topic.83 There are also various hypotheses about the publication date of the Sonetti lussuriosi. For a while, Italian and French scholarship considered the years 1524 and 1525, respectively, as the publication date of Aretino's Sonetti. <sup>84</sup> None of the proposals, however, has been entirely verified thus far (Aquilecchia/Romano in Aretino 1992, 294). In 2018, Danilo Romei proposed 1537 as the new publication date, which would correspond more coherently to Aretino's chronology of works (Romei 2018b, Romei 2020). Furthermore, the relationship between image and text in the Sonetti lussuriosi has been analysed.85 Besides a tendency to ascribe a realistic, anti-literary character to the Sonetti lussuriosi (Larivaille 1980, 72) and to view

Aquilecchia 1982; Bernasconi 1983; Aquilecchia/Romano in Aretino 1992, 290–298; Romei 2013; Romei in Aretino 2019, 103–172; Romei 2019.

Cf. on the possible publication date by Italian scholarship Romano 1991, 20; and by the French scholarship Larivaille 1995; Larivaille 1997, 89–94 and 108–111.

Only marginally in Larivaille 1997, 113–114; Procaccioli 2009; more detailed in Lawner 1984, 37–47; Talvacchia 1999; Cairns 2005, 169–174; Larivaille 2010; Romei 2020.

them as a socio-critical satire86 or as erotic advice (Ganim 2007, 165), other interpretive approaches examine Aretino's collection of sonnets in the realm of specific genres or literary models. In this context, the Sonetti lussuriosi are seen as a deviations from, or burlesque inversions of, Petrarchist-Bembist love poetry.87

#### 1.8.4 Analysis

The proemial sonnet Questo è un libro d'altro che sonetti, which opens the Sonetti lussuriosi in Romei's 2019 edition, programmatically defines the position of the collection vis-à-vis other literary models.<sup>88</sup> In doing so, it establishes a relationship of opposition that draws on several lyric genres at the same time:

Questo è un libro d'altro che sonetti, di capitoli e d'egloghe o canzone; qui il Sannazaro o il Bembo non compone né liquidi cristalli né fioretti; qui il Barignan non v'ha madrigaletti, ma vi son cazzi senza discrezione e v'è la potta e il cul che li ripone, appunto come in scatole confetti; vi sono genti fottenti e fottute e di potte e di cazzi notomie e nei culi molt'anime perdute; qui vi si fotte in le più ladre vie ch'a ponte Siste non sarian credute infra le puttanesque gerarchie. E infin le son pazzie a farsi schifo di sì buon bocconi; e chi non fotte in cul, Dio gliel perdoni. (Aretino 2019, 43; 1)

The sonnet begins with an accentuated detachment from Petrarchist love poetry, evoked by characteristic poetic forms (sonetti, capitoli, canzone, madrigaletti), eminent representatives (primarily Pietro Bembo, further Pietro Barignano) and typical expressions (liquidi cristalli, fioretti) (Romei in Aretino 2019, 82). However, the tradition of bucolic poetry is mentioned together with Petrarchism (egloghe,

Lawner 1984, 35–37; Ciavolella 1995, Whall 2005.

Fischer 1993, 99–106; Waddington 2004, 20–30; Huss 2013.

The proemial sonnet is absent from the existing Cinquecento print and the edition of Aquilecchia and Romano (1992) based on it, but opens what seems a plausible reconstruction of the collection structure in Romei's edition; cf. Romei in Aretino 2019, 152–159.

Sannazaro). The sonnet therefore represents a general distancing from seriously stylised (love) poetry rather than a decidedly anti-Petrarchist positioning.

At the same time, the sonnet echoes the opening distichs of the Carmina Priapea, which sketch a similar antinomy between the obscene character of the poems and an opposed, rejected option (Romei in Aretino 2019, 80–81). The dissociation from Petrarchist and bucolic poetry in the Sonetti lussuriosi corresponds in the Latin model to a rejection of virgin goddesses as protective powers watching over the verses of the collection (Priapées 1, vv. 3–4). In this way, the proemial sonnet establishes, on the one hand, a distancing from Petrarchism and bucolic poetry and, on the other, a reference to the Carmina Priapea as an ancient example of obscene lyricism.

In previous studies, the Sonetti lussuriosi have primarily been examined regarding opposing references to Bembist-Petrarchist poetry. Bernhard Huss (2013) lists several procedures through which a burlesque inversion of Petrarchist poetry becomes apparent on several levels of the text. The shape of the poems as dialogue sonnets, in which female characters demand sexual gratification, presents a clear contrast to the speech situation of Petrarchist praise of women, in which the beloved remains silent and physically unattainable (228). Furthermore, nonconformist references to Petrarchist poetry are evident on a motivic and thematic level. The sonnet Fottiamci, anima mia, fottiamci presto, for example, uses the Petrarchist motif of death to invert it "in eine diesseitige Todesnegierung im Liebesakt" (229). In Marte, malatestissimo poltrone, a mythological reference compatible with Petrarchism is established, but immediately reinterpreted in an obscene manner (230). Huss also describes unorthodox references to features of Petrarchist poetry on a structural level. He considers the fact that the only existing Cinquecento edition of the text contains no proemial but two epilogue sonnets, as an inversion of the structure of Petrarchist canzonieri. The epilogues would then take the functions normally assigned to proems in Petrarchist canzonieri (226). However, as discussed above, the existing edition of the Cinquecento is not a reliable textual source. Moreover, a proemium that seems plausible can be reconstructed on the basis of later editions of the text (Romei in Aretino 2019, 152–159). Huss identifies another reference to Petrarchism in the "forcierte[n] Paradigmatik" (2013, 227) of the Sonetti lussuriosi. The juxtaposition of coital situations corresponds to a "forcierten Serialisierung des immer Gleichen" (227). This radicalises one of the "zentralen Kompositionsprinzipien petrarkischer Zyklen", namely the "paradigmatischen Blöcke", which are typically embedded "in die lineare Syntagmatik der ohnehin fragmentierten Liebeserzählung" (227) in Petrarchist canzonieri. However, against Huss's interpretation one could adduce the fact that this structural feature of the Sonetti lussuriosi is already predetermined by the series of images to which the sonnets refer. The "Serialisierung des immer Gleichen" is already inherent in the theme of the woodcuts, namely the depiction of different variants of sexual consummation. Even if the sonnets, as Huss (227) points out, are only loosely oriented to the pictorial motifs of the woodcuts in detail, there is nevertheless a connection between text and image in terms of content, which also determines the thematic structure of the collection.

Considering the proemial sonnet cited above as an integral part of the text, the features described by Huss can also be placed in the context of an opposition not only specifically to Petrarchism, but more generally to 'high' love poetry. Thus, for example, the reference to mythology in the sonnet Marte, malatestissimo poltrone is compatible not only with Petrarchism but also with bucolic and, more generally, all forms of 'higher' poetry.

The objective announced in the proemial sonnet, however, is realised not only through the procedures described above, but more fundamentally through the pronounced obscenity that thematically and linguistically characterises the Sonetti lussuriosi. This constitutive feature forms an opposition to the idealising perspective of love poetry, in which sexuality cannot be thematised at all or only in a metaphorically veiled way. The implications of this mode of representation also become clear in the letter dating from December 19, 1537, in which Pietro Aretino dedicated the Sonetti lussuriosi to Battista Zatti.89 The letter concludes with the remark that the recipient should make sure whether the verses of the collection 'naturally' depict the poses of those involved in lovemaking ("Intanto considerate se io ho ritratto al naturale coi versi l'atitudine dei giostranti [. . .]." Aretino 2019, 42). In this passage, 'naturalness' seems to mean primarily a realistic representation of the subject, defined by a contrast with the idealising perspective of love poetry. The stylistic artificiality of the high genres is contrasted with the coarseness of the Sonetti lussuriosi, which allows for an unvarnished depiction of physical pleasure.

The letter to Battista Zatti is also revealing because it legitimises the obscenity of the poems on several levels of argumentation. On the one hand, the aspect of naturalness is brought into the field here as well: Sexual reproduction and the male genitalia, he argues, are inherent in the nature of procreation, which means that there is no reason to hide them.<sup>90</sup> Moreover, a pre-existing artistic and literary practice legitimised the obscenity of the poems: both ancient

The letter is included in the first book of Aretino's Lettere (1538); Romei (in Aretino 2019, 156) considers the letter part of the structure of the collection in his edition of the Sonetti lussuriosi.

"Che male è il veder montare un uomo adosso a una donna? Adunque le bestie debbon essere più libere di noi? A me parebbe che il cotale, datoci da la natura per conservazion di se stessa, si dovesse portare al collo come pendente e ne la beretta per medaglia, però che egli è

and contemporary poets and sculptors had sometimes indulged in the treatment of the lascivious for the purpose of mental distraction.91 The obscenity of the sonnets is thus legitimised by the auctoritas veterum and the poems are assigned an unserious dimension that argumentatively diminishes their scandalous potential (Talvacchia 1999, 86–87).

#### 1.8.5 Conclusions

In the Sonetti lussuriosi, a gesture of opposition against Petrarchist lyricism and bucolic poetry is evident. The obscenity of content and language contrasts with the idealising perspective of these forms of literature. Moreover, an unorthodox reinterpretation of individual features of serious love poetry contributes to this relationship of opposition. The lasciviousness of the Sonetti lussuriosi is associated with the aspect of naturalness on several levels. Thus, the obscenity of the sonnets appears as a mode of representation close to reality, which at the same time receives its legitimacy from the naturalness surrounding the subject. It is striking that the semantic field of nature is functionalised in two ways: on the one hand, to designate a specific mode of representation, and, on the other, to justify the subject treated. In both cases, 'naturalness' forms an implicit antithesis to the loftier forms of love poetry. The idealising mode of representation and the stylistic artificiality prevailing there are contrasted with an unveiled, linguistically coarse, and stylistically low mode of representation, which penetrates towards the realm of the bodily-instinctive and thus to a zone that cannot be mentioned in most poetry influenced by classicism. At the same time, the Sonetti lussuriosi are placed in a literary and artistic tradition dedicated to the treatment of lascivious themes for the purpose of intellectual diversion.

la vena che scaturische i fiumi de le genti e l'ambrosia che beve il mondo nei dì solenni." (Aretino 2019, 41) Cf. on this passage also Fischer 1993, 90.

"E perché i poeti e gli scultori antichi e moderni sogliono scrivere e scolpire alcuna volta per trastullo de l'ingegno cose lascive, come nel Palazzo Chisio fa fede il satiro di marmo che tentava di violare un fanciullo, ci sciorinai sopra i sonetti che ci si veggono ai piedi, la cui lussuriosa memoria vi intitolo con pace degli ipocriti [. . .]." (Aretino 2019, 41) As Talvacchia (1999, 86) notes, this passage possibly echoes Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia (XXXV, 72).

### 1.9 Dialogues

Traditionally, a range of different research questions have been directed at the Renaissance dialogue and especially to Italian dialogues of the sixteenth century. Since the 1990s, scholars write about the pluralisation of concepts and ideas characteristic of the Renaissance, about processes of heterogenisation accompanying them, and about the self-dissolution of principles of order and the resulting heterogeneous value systems.<sup>92</sup>

In this context, the literary dialogue of the Renaissance can be considered as one of the central text types in which to observe these processes, insofar as it is a staged conversation between opposite opinions in or as a mode of argumentation, and has become the predominant text type "der Erörterung von Sachfragen überindividueller Reichweite" (Hausmann/Liebermann 2014, 8) alongside the treatise.93 The dialogue has – whether rudimentary or highly differentiated – a narrated or dramatised plot, in which argumentation structures are embedded in different ways. It is therefore characterised both by its fictional-poetic structure and by the fact that factual issues are discussed in it. These issues concern the reading audience – generally speaking Eco's Model Reader – and pertain to possible, impossible or (to a certain extent: between possible and impossible) hazardous practices of individual and collective action, which are negotiated in the social or, more precisely, in the communal space of action of certain groups. Several scholarly studies of the dialogue, which have themselves attained the status of classics, therefore deal with structural features of the dialogue and their function within the framework of a community fashioning. 94

A central approach attempts to define the dialogue of the Cinquecento as a hybrid genre, thereby focusing on its combination of text-type-specific forms of representation. It also includes intermedial elements, referring to a specific rhetorical-stylistic hybridity or a primarily playful contamination of genres.95 Furthermore, the embedding of dialogues in a framing narrative and in other

Cf. on pluralisation Hempfer 1993b, 17–24; Hempfer 2010a, 11–12; the studies of the SFB "Pluralisation and Authority", cf. SFB 573: Publications (uni-muenchen.de); on (heterogeneous) systems of meaning cf. Küpper 1993; Regn 1993.

The fictional "as if" character of the Renaissance dialogue remains dominant even when historical figures appear, cf. Häsner 2004, 23–27.

Cf. Häsner 2004, 48–59; Häsner 2006, 180–189, also on 'resonance spaces' of the respective dialogue.

On dialogue as a hybrid genre cf. Hempfer 2004, 69–72; Corno 1922, 21–27. On the question of playful contamination Häsner/Lozar 2006, 53. See generally the 'bibliographie raisonnée' in Honnacker 2002, 190–251.

paratextual elements and their relatedness to courtly (self-)staging cultures, as well as the social staging of gender roles have particularly been examined.<sup>96</sup>

While from the point of view of research into anti-classicisms, all of these general approaches are significant, their relevance for the research on individual dialogues and dialogue corpora of individual authors has been tested to varying and sometimes lesser degrees and only rarely with regard to those Cinquecento dialogues that can be linked to explicit anti-classicism.

#### 1.9.1 Francesco Berni, Dialogo contra i poeti

#### 1.9.1.1 Origins

Francesco Berni's Dialogo contra i poeti was written in context of the tense political situation in Rome between 1524 and 1525, most probably from the second half of the year 1525 onwards (Corsaro 1989, 60). It appeared in the discursive environment of eminent functionaries who were active in the municipal and ecclesiastical, as well as literary, circles of the city. In general, we are dealing with the aggressiveness of a strongly ideological dispute within the Roman micro- and macrocosm here, even before the Sacco di Roma (Alfano 2011, 120).

Not only aesthetic considerations shape the form and content of the Renaissance dialogue, but it has both a literary and a socially corrective function.<sup>97</sup> Francesco Berni's political and social influence within the Roman community outlined above is expressed in the setting and the argumentation structures of his dialogue; from a poetological point of view, the dialogue is characterised by the use of explicitly formulated anti-classicist positions. A central feature of the dialogue is a redefinition of authorial agency, which underlies not only this text but also Berni's other works such as the Capitoli that appeared around the same time as the Dialogo (Alfano 2011, 127; Bárberi Squarotti in Berni 2014, 45–46).

#### 1.9.1.2 Text and edition history

The Dialogo contra i poeti first appeared in 1526, anonymously. It remains unclear to what extent the imprese, i.e. Berni's personal emblems, that were attached to

Wagner 2009 on Bembos Asolani; Wagner 2012 on Cortegiano; Segler-Meßner 2002; Cox 2000.

On the relationship between fictional and documentary form in Renaissance dialogue cf. Cox 1992, 17; on the association of narrative and historical contexts cf. Honnacker 2002, 24.

the first editions, might have given the primary audience clear indications of Berni's authorship (cf. Reynolds in Berni 1997, 1–2). The Pasquinate written by Girolamo Casio de' Medici for Pasquino celebrations which took place on 25 April 1526, are sometimes considered to be the first response to the Dialogo apparently in circulation (Reynolds in Berni 1997, 4–5; Corsaro 1998). Whereas for the 1540s, there is evidence of the distribution of Berni's writings in Florence, as well as of the first attempts at their suppression in Venice, the first editions of the Dialogo fell victim to censorship in the form of the Roman Index of 1559, which prohibited all works by Berni that had appeared since 1525 (Reynolds in Berni 1997, 26–28). The first modern edition was published by Carlo Gargiolli in 1863, both as a separate work and as part of the complete edition of Berni's works (Berni 1863). It marked the beginning of the modern study of Berni's oeuvre and that of a clear recognition of Berni's authorship, which would no longer be questioned (cf. Reynolds in Berni 1997, 31–33).

The more recent editions, published in 1997 (Berni 1997) and 2014 (Berni 2014), testify to the fact that Berni's work is given the attention it deserves due to the research on the Primo Cinquecento.98

#### 1.9.1.3 Research

The editions mentioned above (Berni 1997 and Berni 2014) comprise extensive contextualising reflections and in-depth interpretations of individual passages. In general, criticism has not only focused on the socio-cultural context or, for example, the pragmatic context of "academic gatherings" (Reynolds in Berni 1997, 143), but from the very beginning located the text directly within the religious discourse of the period (Corsaro 1989). This is necessary also because the Dialogo functions as a mixed form that comprises elements from documentary and fictional dialogue, which, as mentioned above, primarily has the function of criticising the practices and individuals of Roman life in the years 1524–1525. In fact, the dialogue shows distinct traces of a Gibertine ethic that are connected to Berni's activity as secretary to Giovan Matteo Giberti (Reynolds in Berni 1997, 46–49, 59–85; Giampieri 1997, 86–88, 106–107). Fundamental for the understanding of individual passages is the restitution of cultural knowledge underlying the concrete political allusions, or, more specifically, the allusions to certain social groups in the text (Alfano 2011, 127–131).

On the genesis and first printing cf. Reynolds in Berni 1997, 1–5, 31–33, 143–146; Romei 2007b, 163–164. Berni 1997: the text of the dialogue is found on pp. 177–345. Berni 2014: the text of the dialogue and extensive notes are found with commentary in the third part, edited by M. Savoretti, on pp. 318–349.

#### 1.9.1.4 Analysis

A characteristic feature of the Dialogo contra i poeti is that the critique of classicist and contemporary poetry is developed from critical reflections on ancient poetry. A significant example is the passage in which Sanga, the main interlocutor of Berni's own dialogue character, gives a satirically coloured enumeration of various ancient poets and their causes of death:

Lucrezio, per le sue bone opere che fece contro alla religione, prima impazzò, poi si ammazzò da sé stesso. Lucano, sapete che Nerone gli dette la stretta, che non fece mai altra bona opera alli dì suoi. E beati noi, se come segò le vene a Seneca vecchio, così avesse segata la gola anche al nipote, a Silio Italico, a Marziale, et a quell'altra canaglia che empié poi il mondo di veleno. Di Ovidio dicemmo di sopra che morì di freddo in quel paese. Quell'altra pecora, favorita di pedanti, di Iuvenale, anche egli ebbe bando del capo e fece una morte simile. (Berni 1997, 210)

Interestingly, the criticism expressed in the passage is directed against an entire group and not against individual poets. The dramatic course of their lives, which finds its vivid expression in their deaths, is directly linked to the content of their poetry. On previous pages, the behaviour of ancient as well as modern poets is criticised for its non-compliance with religious norms and various gradations of heresy (Berni 1997, 182). Heresy and infamy of the poets are thereby attributed to the "degenerazioni scaturite dell'inopinata professionalizzione della letteratura" (Girardi 1989, 112).

The polemic against pedantismo and bembismo as well as their stylistics – as the Model Reader must know from Berni's and other writers' satirical works of the 1520s – plays an important role in the Dialogo, regarding, in a figurative sense, ancient poets, and, in a direct sense, contemporary poets. The negative view of the imitatio of ancient poetry and of its allegedly exemplary role has a direct effect on the judgment of contemporary poetry. 'Modern' poetry is understood as theft (rubare), its contents are "mendicati dagli antichi" (Berni 1997, 190), and the poets are ladri (Berni 1997, 198). Poets including Homer, Lucretius and Catullus are mentioned in this context. Virgil and Cicero are decisively devalued, their status as author figures that can be imitated in a classical manner is deconstructed, in the case of the latter with the strong expression "questa canaglia" (Berni 1997, 202).99

Cf. for a detailed analysis of these observations in the context of literary judgement Friede 2022b.

#### 1.9.1.5 Conclusions

It can be said that in Berni's Dialogo contra i poeti, poetry is generally understood as mendacious and the craft of writing poetry as of little value. A determined and systematic decanonisation of classicist models follows, with particular criticism of the pedantesque maniera of imitatio. Interestingly, this does imply a reference to classical models of imitation, and in fact not only to those of antiquity, but also to those of the Trecento or Cinquecento. At the same time, poetry itself becomes, in a certain fashion, disenchanted by an anti-classicist 'realism'. Explicitly anti-classicist themes are introduced, such as the mal franzese of the dialogue partner, Stanga (Friede 2022a). Various ad personam attacks are styled on the models of satire, Pasquinade poetry, and occasionally comedy (Corsaro 1998); in addition, comic-burlesque elements are being integrated. In spite of this extensive use of elements oriented towards the contemporary realm, no positive draft of a 'new' or 'alternative' literature or canon is being developed: the dialogue ends by emphasising the existing 'void' and the absence of potential positive judgements. The Dialogo contra i poeti can be read as an explicitly anti-classicist swan song for the literary system of the Primo Cinquecento.

#### 1.9.2 Pietro Aretino, Sei giornate (Ragionamento, Dialogo)

#### 1.9.2.1 Origins

Interestingly, the mal franzese mentioned above, which served as a leitmotiv in anti-classicist literature, is also significant to the Ragionamento by Pietro Aretino (1492–1556), published in Venice in 1534 and dedicated to Francis I.<sup>100</sup>

The Ragionamento and the Dialogo (1536), each of which cover the doings of three days, count, together with the Lettere published from 1537 onwards, amongst Aretino's principal works. Of all the dialogues published in the Cinquecento, scholars consider these texts unanimously as anti-classicist polemics (Malato 1995, 1137). They are understood as the expression of an explicitly anticlassicist poetics, which is "per certi aspetti, la più radicale espressione dell'anticlassicismo cinquecentesco" (Borsellino in Aretino 1984, xvii–xviii). Like their classicist pretexts, i.e. Pietro Bembo's Asolani (1505) and Baldassare Castiglione's

Cf. Aretino 1984, 9: "Antonia 'Il mondo, sì. Lascia star pensierosa a me che, dal mal francioso in fuora, non trovo cane che mi abbai [. . .]'" (this is the third speech of the Giornata prima).

Cortegiano (1528), they belong to the category of dialoghi diegetici (Ordine 1995, 678) and essentially follow the Ciceronian model.

Although the narrated and, at the same time, dramatically presented events take place in a city that is never explicitly named, it can be assumed that the dialogue and, to a large extent, the action, too, occurs in Rome (Ferroni 1995, 32). Characteristic of the Sei giornate is their strong 'reference to reality'; they inextricably interweave the portrayal of Roman circumstances and everyday experiences – that a broad audience could relate to – with sharp criticism of a depraved, basically courtly, world.

#### 1.9.2.2 Text and edition history

There is no doubt that as early as 1530, Aretino was working on the first day of the Ragionamento (Larivaille 2010, 204–207), and that his relatively endangered position in Venetian society and among his patrons certainly played a role in this context. Also, an edited text of the first book already existed in 1530/1531; an "abbozzo della pagina iniziale" can be found among the manuscripts of the Biblioteca Marciana (Larivaille 1980, 140–141).

There are different indications as to the year in which the Sei giornate were placed on the Index.<sup>101</sup> What is important, however, is that the dialogues – despite or because of the indexing – continued to circulate under Aretino's name or pseudonym.<sup>102</sup> We can therefore speak of both works also in terms of 'clandestine' texts. During the period of clandestine distribution, other texts attached themselves to the Sei Giornate, notably the so-called Ragionamento del Zoppino (e.g. in the edition Paris/London 1584).

Only one copy of the first edition of the Ragionamento has been preserved, which had been found in the Enfer of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (Malato 1995, 1148). The Ragionamento and Dialogo were first referred to as the Sei giornate by Giorgio Aquilecchia in his 1969 edition which was based on this manuscript.103

Ciavolella 1995, 4: 1557; Malato 1995, 1129: 1558; Larivaille 1995, 7: 1559.

Cf. for the 1584 (Paris/London) and 1586 (Turin and Venice respectively) editions Larivaille 1995, 7.

For the modern editions from the twentieth century onwards cf. Malato 1995, 1138–1142.

#### 1.9.2.3 Research

Until recently, research focused on the figure of Aretino himself as represented in his works, especially his dialogues, his self-staging, but also the story of his demonisation (see Morano 1995, 573–574). Before the publication of the Companion to Aretino (2021), the figure of Aretino was seen as embodied in the character of Nanna (Moulton 2021, 117–118). An important milestone of Aretino criticism can be seen in Giovanni Maria Mazzucchelli's Vita di Pietro Aretino, published in 1741. Moralising prejudices and a moral condemnation of the Sei giornate was not only prevalent directly after Aretino's death. Notwithstanding recurrent attempts at rehabilitation (prominent among others by Arturo Graf in 1888), they remained effective in biographical accounts and literary analysis well into the twentieth century (Larivaille 1995, 7–9). For Enrico Malato, who provides an overview of the relevant research from 1945 to 1995 (Malato 1995, 1131–1150), a critical, non-moralising engagement with Aretino's works only began in 1948 with the works of Giorgio Petrocchi (Malato 1995, 1138).

Different aspects have been taken up in readings of the Sei giornate: a focus on the representation of the city of Rome as the regnum of fornication (Ferroni 1995, 33); the establishment of a relationship between the mode of life of a puttana and the general portrayal of the world (Moulton 2021, 114); the relationship of the Sei giornati to the Ragionamento de le corti (1538), which can be regarded as its opposite or counterpart.

Most of the non-moralising current research relates to the intertextual relationship of the Sei giornate to other texts and models (cf. chap. 1.9.2.4). What is of fundamental significance here, is the study of the genre. Cottino-Jones (1995, 934) argues that similarly to other ancient and early modern dialogues, the Ragionamento is based on oral narrative and depicts personal experiences. Other recent studies focus primarily on the role of gender and sexuality, as well as the change in social roles (Moulton 2021). These studies implicitly or explicitly rest on the the assumption that the Sei giornate have their 'Sitz im Leben' (i.e. setting in life) in a rejection of courtly life (Ferroni 1995, 35). The hypothesis that the Sei giornate may also represent a manuale for the behaviour of prostitutes (Ordine 1995, 688) also corresponds to the idea of this 'Sitz im Leben'.

#### 1.9.2.4 Analysis

The narrative frame of the Ragionamento clearly emphasises the fact that the Sei giornate try to surpass Boccaccio's Decameron: in her comment "Perdonimi il Centonovelle [. . .]" (Aretino 1984, 60) Antonia apologises only superficially, offering, above all, Nanna an opportunity to invoke the hierarchy of thing and mere image, which Berni had already (cf. chap. 1.2.4) claimed to be a reasonable criterion of evaluation for Michelangelo's poetry: "Questo non dico io: – replica con prudenza la narratrice – ma voglio che egli confessi almeno che le mie son cose vive, e le sue dipinte." (Aretino 1984, 60) The composition of the dialogues is thus characterised at the same time by intertextual and intermedial components, which constitute the central characteristics of the combination of genres typical for anti-classicist texts (Borsellino in Aretino 1984, xxi).

Indeed, Boccaccio's Decameron is the object of intertextual reference in the Sei giornate to an even greater extent than the Asolani and the Cortegiano. This is particularly striking if one looks at the contrast achieved by the simplicity of the setting in the Ragionamento (Cottino-Jones 1995, 939; Ciavolella 1995, 66): the Sei giornate reverse the locus amoenus motif found not only in the frame of the Decameron but also of Pietro Bembo's dialogue Gli Asolani (Procaccioli 1987, 55; Ordine 1995, 674–683). In this way, the Ragionamento strives for a polemical form of reverse imitatio and an aemulatio regarding both works (cf. Larivaille 1980, 152–155). At the same time, Boccaccio's obscene literary language, but also that of younger poets such as Angelo Firenzuola, is developed further (Ciavolella 1995, 64).

Other important reference texts of the Sei giornate include volgarizzamenti of Erasmian texts, which became available as an alternative to Ciceronian classicism from the 1530s onwards (Procaccioli 1999b, 162–163). In general, however, the Ciceronian dialogue model is replaced in the Sei giornate by a reference to Lucian's dialogues.104 Comedy and its courtly dimension also play a certain role as a model (Ferroni 1995, 25; Borsellino in Aretino 1984, 25).

Concerning classical Roman literature, concrete intertextual references to Virgil, especially to the Aeneid and the depiction of the relationship between Dido and Aeneas, can be demonstrated (Malato 1995, 1143–1144; Cottino-Jones 1995, 954). At the same time, the Sei giornate continue to rewrite Ovid's texts, especially the Ars amatoria (Procaccioli 1987, 55–56; Ciavolella 1995, 64). Regarding the question of the obscene, a veritable accumulation of intertexts manifests itself in the Sei giornate, within which especially Spanish erotic literature of the Cinquecento, and in particular Francisco Delicado's Lozana andalusa (Venice 1528), plays an important role (Procaccioli 1987, 57–58; Cottino-Jones 1995, 940–941).

Cf. Ordine 1995, 685–686 (with bibliography) and Fantappiè 2017; Fantappiè 2019; Fantappiè in course of print.

#### 1.9.2.5 Conclusions

The Sei giornate develop an anti-Bembist and anti-Petrarchist counter-language that is characterised on the one hand by an attempt at linguistic 'realism' and authenticity, and, on the other, by metaphorical and euphemistic excess.<sup>105</sup> The techniques of linguistic obscurity or opaqueness employed in the text are, on the one hand, endowed with an aesthetic anti-classicist autonomy, similar to that of the Sonetti lussuriosi (Whall 2005, 13); on the other hand, they have a concrete function, as they are directed against the ideal of perspicuity championed in Ciceronian rhetoric (Procaccioli 1987, 47–48); at the same time, this type of language obfuscates the sexual act and therefore works as a kind of self-censorship, a means of defense against the threat of outside censorship (Larivaille 1996, 15–16; Larivaille 2010, 207).

Because of its abundantly clear anti-Bembism, the Sei giornate became a model text for Venetian poets who wrote anti-Bembist poetry in the wake of Aretino from their publication in 1534 onward (Procaccioli 1987, 61; Procaccioli 1999b, 157). However, the Sei giornate are not mere parody; rather, they are characterised by a constant interaction of 'high' models and their negation or 'twisting'. This observation applies to all levels of the text – thematic, rhetoric, stylisation, representation of characters and paratext. This can be observed, for example, in the entanglement of anti-Petrarchism, obscenity, moralism and a positive humanism in these dialogues, which form an experimental field in which traditional narrative patterns and modes of expression are demythologised (cf. Ferroni 1995, 35; Cottino-Jones 1195, 939). In the dedication of the Dialogo to Messer Bernardo Valdaura, what has been narrated in the preceding part of the Ragionamento is termed "tre giorni di Capricci" (Aretino 1984, 210). The term capriccio coincides with what is today known as the Capriccio-discourse in art history. The fact that it is used here also clarifies the proximity of what is addressed in the Sei giornate on the one hand and the characteristics of the grotesque on the other (Friede 2015).

The explicit anti-classicism of the Sei giornate is based on all the features mentioned above and also on the fact that diverse references to other explicitly anti-classicist texts and genres – such as to the satirical poetry of Ariosto, for example, and to Berni's and Folengo's poetry – are interwoven with them.

On the pragmatic level, the strongly socio-critical element of the dialogues has an explicitly anti-classicist effect. Using the means of polemics and parody, it takes a critical look at the position of women in particular (Cottino-Jones 1995, 948–957; Moulton 2021, 116) and the behaviour of the clergy.

Cf. Ordine 1995; Moulton 2021, 115–116; Cottino-Jones 1995, 944.

#### 1.9.3 Pietro Aretino, Le carte parlanti

#### 1.9.3.1 Origins

In Aretino's dialogue Le carte parlanti (1543), courtly themes and court life make a return appearance as one of its numerous subjects. The dialogue takes place between the historical figure of Federico Padovano on the one hand and a set of cards endowed with speech on the other. The very use of the collective personification of the cards reverses the logic of the classicist dialogue, in that, rather than speaking about objects of the outer world (such as the paintings and sculptures in Lodovico Dolce's Dialogo della pittura of 1557), speaking objects become characters in the dialogue. The Model Reader thus has to deal with a paradoxical, carnivalesque text that depicts the world as reversed (Girardi 1986, 103). Le carte parlanti consists primarily of dramatised stories with some scenic elements, which seem very close to everyday life and which presuppose a certain savoir culturel of the Model Reader.

The text apparently refers to the practice of gambling as it was prevalent at the home of Cardinal Niccolò de' Gaddi (Ferroni 1995, 46–47). Already in the Ragionamento, gambling had been personified as a kind of adversary of prostitutes. Aretino's text repeatedly points to the fact that both a prostitute and the game are in a direct struggle for a man's money (cf. Giaccone 1989, 226).

#### 1.9.3.2 Text and edition history

The text of the Carte parlanti appeared in 1543 in Venice as Dialogo di Pietro Aretino, nel quale si parla de giuco con moralità piacevole, printed by Giovann de' Farri e fratelli (Giaccone 1989, 225, not. 1). A second edition appeared in 1545, also in Venice (printed by Bartolomeo detto l'Imperador [. . .]), and another in 1589 with an altered title, from the press of Gio. Andrea del Melograno (Casalegno in Aretino 1992, 29). Two editions printed in 1650 and in 1651, which used for the first time the current title Le carte parlanti, both demonstrate censorship-related modifications. The edition published by F. Campi in 1914 is based on this modified text. It was not until 1992 that Giovanni Casalegno and Gabriella Giaccone edited the earlier, uncensored text (and recorded some minor changes made in 1589 in the notes).

#### 1.9.3.3 Research

In general, the text is considered to have been neglected by scholars, and this is indeed the case.<sup>106</sup> In the existing research on the Carte parlanti, similarly to the Ragionamento, references to historical real circumstances and conditions are examined, and intertextual systems of reference identified. As far as the analysis of references to extra-literary reality is concerned, it is emphasised above all that the dialogue depicts the kaleidoscopically changing constitution of the world (Girardi 1986, 106). The historical context and Aretino's 'autobiographical' background are usually in focus, including a detailed characterisation of historical individuals who indulged in playing cards (Girardi 1988, 108–118). Furthermore, the combination of genres that determines the shape of the dialogue is emphasised, such as, for example, the integration of beffe from dramatic literature and from the novelle (Bolzoni 1995, 643). As a third aspect, several articles argue that despite all ridicule, the dialogue has a moral subtext: it contains moral aphorisms, and the merits of the game are underlined. The card game combines, for example, otium and negotium (Girardi 1986, 119–120), and the speaking cards are depicted not only as objects embodying a carnivalesque culture, but also as 'wise things'; the dialogue pursues a thoroughly instructive-didactic goal (Giaccone 1989, 238).

#### 1.9.3.4 Analysis

An analysis of the dialogue must take a variety of intertextual references into account. The appearance of the figure Pasquino refers to the Pasquinate (Girardi 1986, 103); Berni's Capitolo del gioco della primiera also counts as an important intertext. Moreover, in a parodical manner, the layout of the Cortegiano (Bolzoni 1995, 647) is played with, and reference is made to Erasmus' Laus Moriae (Bolzoni 1995, 643).

What is decisive, however, is above all the fact that the dialogue more than adequately complies with classicist practices of dialogue (Giaccone 1989, 225–226). A casuistry of the game is presented; the formation of a judgement about the status of the game is encouraged in Padovano as well as in the Model Reader. A similar practice occurs for example in the Asolani, albeit with reference to a different object. The anti-classicist 'twist' lies in the fact that the vices of the game are neither

Cf. especially Bolzoni 1995, 642, for all the research literature up to 1995; Malato 1995, 1146, with not. 27.

subject for a dialogue nor one that could be made acceptable in a classicist manner of presentation. Nevertheless, elements of a possible 'classical' discourse on the game of cards are referred to, namely the invention of the game by Palamedes during the siege of Troy, which is treated in various sources such as the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (cf. Girardi 1986, 105; Giaccone 1989, 230).

A typical feature of explicitly anti-classicist writing is the opposition to pedantic and Petrarchan or Petrarchist poetry (cf. Bolzoni 1995, 658). This becomes particularly evident when the cards, in a pedantic manner, paraphrase mundane remarks in deliberately exclusive diction and are criticised by Padovano for it:

PADOVANO: E a ciò che da me non si è più compreso ne i vostri andari.

CARTE: Il cuore di colui che disputa di materie importanti, essulta ne la efficacia de la mente, la qual procrea i pensieri che formano le cose che poi distingue la lingua, caso che chi lo ascolta accenni con la intelligenzia di capire i sensi de i concetti che esso prepara di esprimere.

PADOVANO: Cotesto parlare isquisito avete voi rubato da qualche giocatore dotto?

CARTE: Indovinasti. (Aretino 1992, 48)

Besides, in this context, the motif of reprimanding a poet for stealing from erudite model authors is used. This device is known from Berni's Dialogo and here, too, it is accentuated in an anti-classicist way.

#### 1.9.3.5 Conclusions

All in all, Le carte parlanti display four essential features that can be regarded as characteristics of explicit anti-classicism: a) They make a travesty of motivic, thematic, and discursive elements that are characteristic of the canonical spectrum of classicist texts (Procaccioli 1987, 46–52). In contrast to classicist dialogues, for example, the dialogue establishes a 'poetics of ignorance and naturalness' with the help of narrative components that establish a "natura centonesca del testo" (Procaccioli 1987, 52). b) The dialogue is generally characterised by a strong moment of ambivalence of high and low language and stylisation, and by a discursive structure characterised by chaotic enumerations, hyperbolic sequences, and a constant, capriccio-like change of subjects (Girardi 1985, 107–111). The game creates an infinity of cases and situations, which on the one hand – and this too is ambivalent – have unfavourable effects on the player, but, on the other hand, also turn out to be emblems of human life. c) Despite its opposition to pedantism and Petrarchism, the dialogue refuses to be linguistically standardised;107 rather, it implicitly refers to the chameleonic nature of writing and play (Bolzoni 1995, 659). d) Moreover, transitions from explicit classicism to paraclassicism become apparent in it: the mosaic of 'reality patterns' and their serial juxtaposition are supported by an intertextual frame that exhibits, primarily in a performative manner, the diverse classical and classicist literary patrimony in spite of all the anti-classical gestures exhibited in the text.

#### 1.9.4 Nicolò Franco, Il Petrarchista

#### 1.9.4.1 Origins

Nicolò Franco's <sup>108</sup> dialogue Il Petrarchista represents a threefold satirical confrontation: first, with Petrarch's poetry; second, with the poetry of the Petrarchists; and third, with the commentary on Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (cf. Rinaldi 2006, passim; Bruni 1980, 82). All three levels of satire are always inextricably intertwined in the dialogue. Given this context, it is no coincidence that the title of the dialogue is one of the first main evidences of a negative use of the term 'Petrarchist' (Béhar 2017, 190). Mimicking the practice of imitatio favoured by the Petrarchists and of a certain form of Petrarch scholarship, the dialogue exposes the problems of a complex phenomenon (Mehltretter 2006, 149–153) that shaped Cinquecento literature like no other. In addition, practices of the cult of Petrarch (Bruni 1980, 62) are presented as a kind of superordinate object of the satire. Il Petrarchista describes how the character Sannio, one of the two speaker figures, undertakes a 'pilgrimage' (Sabbatino 2003) to Laura's tomb.

A direct reference of the dialogue to the biographically-oriented Petrarch commentary by Alessandro Vellutello (1525) can be assumed, in which the latter states that he, too, made a journey to Laura's tomb in Vaucluse (cf. Mehltretter 2009, 197–200; Mehltretter 2006, 152). The Petrarchista is already connected to the Dialogi piacevoli via the paratext, insofar as its introductory letter is addressed to Leone Orsini's secretary Bonifazio Pignoli, to whom one of the Dialogi piacevoli is also dedicated.109

It is questionable whether, as claimed by Girardi 1986, 119, dignitas is given point to the so-called 'mercantile style' despite its low style.

The first edition of 1539 and further editions show the spelling of the first name with one 'c', cf. Franco 2003. In research and handbooks, alternating spellings with one or two 'c's are used. Here, the spelling 'Nicolò' is used throughout.

Cf. on the paratext Kers 1912, 12; Bortot 2006, 184; Mehltretter 2006, 151–153.

#### 1.9.4.2 Text and edition history

The first edition of the Petrarchista was published in Venice by Giovanni Gioliti in 1539. Its complete title, according to Bruni (in Franco 1979, 111), already announces the revelation of secrets about Petrarch's person and doings – a claim that constitutes an essential aspect of the role of a Petrarchista: "Il Petrarchista, dialogo di M. Nicolò Franco, nel quale si scuoprono nuovi secreti sopra il Petrarca. E si dano a leggere molte lettere che il medemo Petrarca in lingua thoscana scrisse a diverse persone. Cose rare, ne mai piu date a luce." Between 1539 and 1623, many other editions of the dialogue appeared.<sup>110</sup>

#### 1.9.4.3 Research

It is noteworthy that similarly to Pietro Aretino's Sei giornate, there were no positive judgements on the Petrarchista in research until 1945 (Bruni 1977; Bruni 1980, 61). In recent studies, two aspects in particular have been pursued: on the one hand, the question of the target object of the criticism formulated in the Petrarchista and, on the other, the procedures of parody employed in the dialogue.

Concerning the first question, Florian Mehltretter has argued that the figure of the petrarchista in the narrative could only be the character of Roberto from Avignon who appears in the embedded story (Mehltretter 2006, 153). On this level, the petrarchista is a fictitious imitation of a kind of Petrarch scholar (161), whereas on the thematic level of the speeches, the term also refers to the poetic imitators of Petrarch. Commentators and biographers of Petrarch as well as Petrarchists in the modern sense would thus be the target of criticism. Robert Béhar (2017, 195–196) argues that not only these, but also Petrarch's method of self-staging himself in the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta is the object of the dialogue's critique. Moreover, elements of a regional Neapolitan Bembism (Béhar 2017, 199–210) and regional pedantic poets such as Girolamo Borgia are also satirically parodied (196–197). Béhar considers that both the social and courtly approach to Petrarch's poetry, i.e. the 'Petrarch of the courtesans', and the literary and linguistic approach, i.e. the 'Petrarch of the pedants', are parodied in the text (Béhar 2017, 194).

Cf. for the first editions Bruni's list in Franco 1979, 111–113, and the list of 40 editions in Iermano 1997, 142; De' Angelis 1977, 59–60, also contains a list of editions from 1539–1623.

Regarding the second issue of the concrete methods of parody, Francesca De' Angelis (1977) has determined the relationship between Petrarch's poetry and the Petrarchista in linguistic terms. She demonstrates in detail the techniques of antithesis, direct insertion from the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, accumulation and the establishment of a modular structure à la Petrarch. In addition to these linguisticrhetorical phenomena, irony, fictionalisation, and the deconstruction of biographical causality serve as superordinate strategies of undermining Petrarch's authority (Mehltretter 2006, 158–162; cf. also Kers 1912, 27–29). In general, a disenchantment with everything Petrarchan can be noted in Il Petrarchista (Bortot 2006, 169).

#### 1.9.4.4 Analysis

A detailed look at Il Petrarchista shows that and how an intertextual inlay technique shapes the text (Bortot 2006, 170). However, this does not imply a clear break with classicist writing, but rather a dialectical attitude that explicitly combines anti-classicist strategies with the adoption of classicist elements from what would have been 'primary' and 'secondary' texts at the time. In addition to Vellutello's commentary on Petrarch, Il Petrarca by Fausto da Longiano (1552) (Béhar 2017, 190) and the commentary of Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo (Mehltretter 2009, 152) are relevant in the 'secondary' field. Adoptions, intertextual and system-related allusions in Il Petrarchista point to texts by Dante, Ariosto, Machiavelli and Aretino (Béhar 2017, 200–202), as well as Erasmus (191–192) and Boccaccio (Mehltretter 2009, 165–166). In 1980, Roberto L. Bruni demonstrated that one-fifth of the text of Il Petrarchista consists of transcripts from commentaries on Petrarch (Bruni 1980, 63–78). In this way, the dialogue itself is determined by the logic of appropriation it criticises.

#### 1.9.4.5 Conclusions

The complex layout of the Petrarchista and the role of anti-classicist writing in this dialogue can be characterised in different ways. The dialogue's position between the polemically anti-Petrarchist pamphlet and pastiche can unquestionably be understood as "antipetrarchismo petrarchesco" (Bortot 2006, 165). In addition, the text deals with a "maniera di dire", a goffezza and thus the ironic-parodistic stylisation on the rhetorical level (Béhar 2017, 193). The techniques of poetic description used by Petrarch and his followers are explicitly devalued, attacked, and questioned (Bruni 1980, 78). In these contexts – and this is perfectly comparable to Aretino's Sei giornate – sudden changes of register play an important role.

On the other hand, we can also argue that the dichotomy between classicism and anti-classicism does not quite fit this dialogue, since it is characterised above all by anti-religious and anti-formalist polemics (Pignatti 1999, 99–100). In fact, in many places the dialogue features concrete criticism of the church and the pope (Pignatti 1999, 186; Mehltretter 2006, 167) as well as criticism of concrete social problems (Bortot 2006, 181).

However, when the character Sannio decides at the end of the dialogue, for economic motives, to join the group of authors of a Petrarch commentary,111 what we are left with is the inextricable anti-classicist ambivalence of valid criticism of church, court and society and a playful deconstruction of Petrarchist poetics.

#### 1.9.5 Nicolò Franco, Dialogi piacevoli

#### 1.9.5.1 Origins

In the same year as the publication of the first edition of the Petrarchista – and that of the Pistole vulgari – Nicolò Franco's Dialogi piacevoli<sup>112</sup> were published, whereas there is little to no information about the actual period in which they were written (Pignatti in Franco 2003, 59–60). It is a collection of ten dialogues and their dedicatory letters, which Franco used to explore new horizons, as he states in the dedicatory letter of the eighth dialogue to Giovan Tomaso Bruno: "seguire altra strada che la mia solita" (Franco 2003, 291).<sup>113</sup> These dialogues touch upon problems of everyday life, intellectual positionings and philosophical and literary divulgations of all kinds. In their experimental character, they distance themselves from both Aristotelian and Ciceronian models (Pignatti in Franco 2003, 9–13; Pignatti 1999, 111).

#### 1.9.5.2 Text and edition history

Like the Petrarchista, the first edition of the Dialogi piacevoli was published in Venice by Giovanni Gioliti. Other Venetian editions from the years 1541, 1542 and 1545 exist, published by Gabriele Giolito, as well as from the 1550s and 1590s

In research, both this and the modernised spelling 'Dialoghi' are adopted.

Franco 1979, 106: "[Sannio] Onde facilmente correranno i compratori per vedere tante testé, et tanti guari ne l'opra mia, perché le belle figurine a le volte fanno spacciare i libri." Here and in the following, the spelling 'Dialogi' is used, which is found in the first prints.

Cf. for an interpretation of this statement Pignatti in Franco 2003, 13–15.

(Pignatti in Franco 2003, 60–65; Pignatti 1999, 100–101). The dedicatee of the seventh letter is Bonifazio Pignatti, to whom the Petrarchista and numerous letters are also dedicated. The dedicatee of the first letter is Bishop Leone Orsini. Thus, also by means of the structure of the paratexts, Franco's works published in 1539 are closely linked. In 1590, an edited and later often reprinted edition appeared under the title Dialoghi piacevolissimi, also in Venice, by Altobello Salicato. French and Spanish translations of this edition also exist (Pignatti in Franco 2003, 62–63, 65–66).114

#### 1.9.5.3 Research

In general, it can be said that the Dialogi piacevoli have not been convincingly researched (cf. Pignatti 1999, 100; Bortot 2006, 175–176). De' Angelis (1977, 43) demonstrates a "scelta precisa di scrittura" and discusses this style of writing of the Dialogi with reference to the dialogic-inductive method of other dialogues of the Cinquecento.<sup>115</sup> Like in the Petrarchista, a programmatic-critical reflection on Petrarch's poetry can also be demonstrated in the Dialogi; there are also direct references to the Petrarchista in Dialogue III (Bortot 2006, 166, 180). All in all, the dialogues show an eclectic position regarding imitatio that can be anti-Ciceronian (as in Dialogue III, cf. Pignatti 1999, 108); likewise, there are anti-humanist, anti-ecclesiastical and anti-clerical allusions, some of which are similar to those found in Erasmus (Pignatti 1999, 119).

#### 1.9.5.4 Analysis

Important characteristics of the Dialogi are their heterogeneity and the unpredictability of the frame of reference chosen in each case, which are due to Franco's typical method of multiple usage of intertextually valuable material (Pignatti 1999, 115). Nevertheless, the most important texts of reference can clearly be named: in addition to Pontano's dialogues (Iermano 1997, 136), Lucian's dialogues in particular function as a pre-text (Pignatti in Franco 2003, 14–27; Pignatti 1999, 118; Fantappiè in course of print). The Dialogi can be described as "dialoghi a guisa di Luciano" (Iermano 1997, 123), a remark that was made about them as

Pignatti in Franco 2003, 102–107, compares the original and the expurgated version.

This dialogic-inductive mode of writing is characterised by (De' Angelis 1977, 43): "l'accogliamento di una pluralità di rapporti e quindi l'analisi particolareggiata del ragionamento."

early as in the seventeenth century. The question of the extent to which Franco's Dialogi adopt stylistic and textual elements from the writings of Erasmus has been critically reflected upon by scholars (Pignatti 1999, 117–119); in this context, it is significant that the quarrel between Nicolò Franco and Pietro Aretino also concerned questions of Erasmian style (Iermano 1997, 125–126).

Little or not very detailed attention has been given to the question of the recourse to ancient authors and ancient myths as well as the explicitly anticlassicist, parodic reference of the Dialogi to pedantismo. Both perspectives can be illustrated by a look at Dialogue III, as shown by the title: Dialogo di M. Nicolò Franco, nel quale induce Borgio pedante impetrare da Caronte tempo da pensare l'Oratione che dee fare ne l'inferno dinanzi a Plutone (Franco 2003, 169). The anticlassicist engagement with the Ciceronian model (Iermano 1997, 129–131) is achieved through a clearly polemical and at the same time anti-pedantic thrust in the discussion of rhetorical discourse:

BOR[gio]: [. . .] Hora io ho letto in Tullio che son cinque le parti dell'officio de l'oratore: inventione, dispositione, elucotione, memoria e pronunciatione. Tutte queste cose, poi che non si possono conseguire se non con arte, con immitatione e con essercitio, è forza ch'io lasci star. Io so che buono pronunciare non puote essere ne la mia bocca, per essere senza denti. So che né memoria né inventione è in me, per trovami smemorato da la vecchiezza. Ma non ho detto che mi bisogna ne l'Oratione fuggire i vitii del parlare e massime il solecismo et il barbarismo per essere barbari tutti i pedanti? Che più? Hora che mi ricordo: fa di mistiero d'adornare il parlare con i colori rhetorici, tra i quali è la repetitione, la quale è quando continuamente si pigliano i principii da uno et il medesimo verbo in cose simili e diverse [. . .]." (Franco 2003, 173)

The anti-classicist ambivalence that at times characterises the Petrarchista is also found here: Borgio shows erudition when he lists the five officia of the orator for the preparation of a speech according to Cicero. Then again, elements of anti-Petrarchist poetry are invoked, when Borgio declares that he lacks the teeth for pronuntiatio and that his vecchiezza stands in the way of memoria. This is linked – somewhat forcedly – to a clearly anti-Petrarchist argument that basically characterises the technique of "adornare il parlare con i colori rhetorici" as a barbarismo.

#### 1.9.5.5 Conclusions

In summary, four explicitly anti-classicist features of the Dialogi piacevoli can be identified: (a) a clearly anti-Ciceronian polemic, as it appears above all in Dialogue III; (b) the explicitly occurring antipedantismo, embedded in a fundamentally satirical and polemical intellectual aggressiveness; (c) a "scrittura poliedrica e asistematica" (Pignatti 1999, 116) which creates an ambivalence between learned montage in the cento style and intertwined oppositional gestures. However, d) these must be accompanied by a more fundamental observation: when, at the end of Dialogue VIII, the decline of poetry and the excessive number of poets are lamented (which reminds us of the central argument in Berni's Dialogo contra i poeti), then this is a complaint that belongs to the explicitly anticlassicist position within the literary establishment of the Cinquecento. This complaint is in turn answered in the anti-classicist texts themselves – and not only in the Dialogi – by acts of distorting and reversing appropriation, which make us aware of a dramatically changing literary system.

### 1.10 Lorenzo Venier: La puttana errante (Avi Liberman)

#### 1.10.1 Origins

Comical elements were already present in chivalric romances at the end of the fifteenth century. One of the best examples is Luigi Pulci's Morgante (1478/ 1483), a parody of the genre. The eponymous giant, like the other giants in the poem, eats and drinks fervently. The knights are also quirky and surrender to their passions and whims easily. Due to the popularity of this poem in Florence and outside of it, one can notice other poets imitating some of the parodical aspects in what Stefano Nicosia calls the "funzione Morgante" (Nicosia 2015).

Aretino pursues Pulci's parodical line, although failing to produce a full-scale and innovative chivalric poem (Nicosia 2015, 94–106; Villoresi 2020, 42–51; Cabani 2021). Lorenzo Venier belonged to his circle of poets and admirers in Venice, as some of the first octaves in the Puttana errante, as well as Aretino's letters, testify (Catelli in Venier 2005, 21–27). Venier draws inspiration from Aretino's ferocious poetic style, especially the vituperation, and from his language (Erasmi 1995, 876–878; Catelli in Venier 2005). Venier chooses narrative material from outside the Charlemagne universe: La Puttana errante is inspired by chivalric romances, but the protagonist is a prostitute, not a knight; she is Venetian and contemporary to the author, unlike the chivalric poems which take place in an imaginary past.

#### 1.10.2 Text and edition history

A short poem of four cantos in ottava rima, the Puttana errante tells the journey of an unnamed Venetian courtesan from her hometown to Rome. The Errante embarks on adventures of an obscene character in different cities and regions of the peninsula. Her arrival in the Eternal City coincides with the Sack of Rome (1527). But while the Romans react with horror to this catastrophe, the protagonist of this short poem laughs as she enjoys the destruction of the city, and sleeps with all the foreign soldiers. At the end of the last canto, she is pictured as a winner, and to honour her a procession is held.

The first editions of Venier's Puttana errante do not include any dates, but their publication can be retraced thanks to letters written by Aretino in which he mentions the poem. It was probably written in 1530, and Aretino's biographer Giammaria Mazzuchelli refers to a first edition, in three cantos, published the following year, which is now lost. An integral edition was published in 1531 or in 1536. Mazzuchelli speaks of another edition, presumably a reprint, that goes back to 1538, but no copy of it has survived (Mazzuchelli 1763, 237; Catelli in Venier 2005, 94–95). Later editions in the sixteenth century attribute the poem to Lorenzo's son, Maffio Venier. A French translation of the poem along with an introduction, edited by Alcide Bonneau, appeared in Paris in 1883. It attributes the poem to Lorenzo and argues that the Errante, whose name remains a secret in the text "per non vituperar il mondo" (Venier 2005, 34), is based on the Venetian courtesan Elena Ballerina with whom Lorenzo had an affair that ended badly, as she was trying to steal his money ([Bonneau] 1883, v–xxiii). An annotated, critical edition by Nicola Catelli was published in 2005.

#### 1.10.3 Research

Because most poem-parodies in the sixteenth century were not particularly successful, literary scholars handle them sporadically, apart from Aretino's incomplete chivalric poems. Venier's poems are no exception. Erasmi (1995) lists Venier's models for the Puttana errante and offers a possible interpretation of the poem as a political allegory of Italy. At the same time, he underlines that a coherent interpretation is impossible because Venier seems to enjoy parody just for the sake of it. Catelli (Venier 2005) offers a well-commented edition of the poem as well as a survey of Venier's biography and the genesis of the poem. His introduction focuses on the motif of the Sack of Rome. This researcher also provides a few examples of the Puttana errante in his monography about parodies in the sixteenth century (Catelli 2011). In addition, the gender aspects of the poem, as well as the social meaning of the courtesan, were discussed by Quaintance (2015).

#### 1.10.4 Analysis

The poem is a comic parody of the chivalric romance, as is alluded to by the poem's title. The Errance is a common topos in this genre: in his quests, the errant-knight faces challenges that ultimately lead to his personal development and to the growth of his virtues (Auerbach <sup>7</sup> 1982, 120–138; Köhler <sup>2</sup> 1970, 66–88). Reading about the adventures of famous chivalric heroines like Ancroia, Marfisa, and Bradamante and wanting to imitate them is what makes Errante go on her journey to Rome. As is often the case with parodies, every diegetic element is inverted (Catelli 2011, 55–122). The knight-errant becomes a prostitute-errant. In accordance with her low social status, her adventures are degraded and revolve mostly around sexual encounters, including some with animals, like the monstrous dog in Bologna who is attracted to her malodour (I, 39–45). Also, Errante's journey in no way entails a moral development. One might expect a conversion or repentance to occur when she arrives in Rome. Instead, it seems she is more depraved than she was before. On the one hand, her lewdness seems to be exceptional. That is her virtue and she is thus the "eroica puttana" (II, 26, 3), as referred to by the narrator. On the other hand, this 'virtue' does not increase. Others might marvel at her, but she does not really acquire new virtues in her journeys, if not the recognition as the most excellent prostitute. The poem reflects this sort of stagnation with its circular structure, insofar that the last octave suggests that Errante returns to Venice, the point of departure for her quest. Apart from this, concrete references to known works of chivalric literature are also part of the parodic strategy. The best example is the beginning of the second canto. After falling into the Reno river, the Errante vows to offer her services, if she would be saved. Her rescuer is a peasant. This is a parody of the old hermit, who rescues Angelica from drowning in canto VIII of Orlando furioso by Ariosto (Erasmi 1995, 887–888).

Parody is also carried out on a formal level. The obvious choice for the metric form of an epic is the octave. The narrator is much like a narrator of a chivalric romance, for instance, when he uses metalepsis. The narrator talks directly to his readers, as if they were his listeners, and informs them that the canto is coming to an end or that he returns to the subject ("Ma torniamo a colei del chiasso gemma", III, 6, 1). More interesting are the proems with which each canto is introduced. The first one is structured like a classical proem. It contains the argument of the poem (I, 1) as a comic inversion of the sublime mission and heroic protagonist ("D'una frustabordel, ladra impudica, / Vengo a cantar gli orrendi potamenti", I, 1–2) as well as the invocation to the gods, in this case, to Aretino (I, 2–5). Aretino has a double function in the proem. He should lend the poet his language ("Presti tanto di lingua, che palese / Faccia da l'Arsenal fin a la Tana / L'opre poltrone d'una gran puttana", I, 3, 5–8) and especially his vituperative style (Erasmi 1995, 876–878) and at the same time accord him a favor so he can commence his poem ("Ora col favor tuo vo comminciando", I, 5, 1), in what seems like a dedication to his patron. By mentioning Aretino in that way, Venier associates himself with a specific literary ambience.

In the other proems, Venier aims to justify the choice of his coarse and rough language. He repeats themes that can be traced back to Berni's poems as well as other burlesque poets. One of Venier's explanations for his language is the classicist idea of the congruence between res and verba. As Erasmi notices, his models are Aretino and Dante, as both are well known for their invective and harsh language (Erasmi 1995, 877–880):

Lingua d'acciarro e voce di bombarda, Stil arrabbiato e ingegno furiobondo, Una penna che tagli, un foglio ch'arda, Tromba, che s'odi fin ne l'altro mondo, Bisogna a me per dir a la gagliarda Di un cul, che non ha né fin né fondo, E d'una potta, u' 'l morbo si raguna, La più larga, che sia sotto la luna. (II, 1)

Furthermore, the clarity of the text is important, because metaphorical language might leave the reader confused and in need of further explanations:

S'io dico "chiave ne la serratura", Chi 'ntenderebbe mai "cazz'in la potta"? S'io dico "il membro va contra natura", Bisogna Isopo che 'l comenti allotta. (III, 3, 1–4)

But Venier also mentions the amusement that one experiences in pronouncing vulgar terms:

Io non vi pasco in monti, in selve, in valli Di soventi, lascivie e vaghe erbette, D'unquanchi isnelli e liquidi cristalli, D'ombre soavi e dolci parolette, Come fan quei, ch'i pegasei cavalli Scorticano ogni dì con le staffette. Et ha la nostra lingua un gran solazzo Dicendo a bocca piena e "potta" e "cazzo". (III, 5) As Catelli mentions in his commentary, these verses are a parody of Petrarchan commonplaces (Venier 2005, 51). Another Petrarch parody (of the Trionfi) is the triumphal march of Errante at the end of the fourth canto, as well as, more generally, the depiction of the protagonist as an anti-Laura (Erasmi 1995, 881). In addition to that, Venier expresses his dislike of Petrarch in his note to the readers:

Fratelli beati coloro, che approno le orecchie del core alla gran tromba del quinto evangelista san Giovanni Boccaccio, e guai a quelli, che a gli incazziti fernetichi di messer Petrarca daran fede, perché l'uno è accesa candela de' buon socii, l'altro è tenebre di chi coglionescamente crede, che la sua monna Laura pisciasse acqua d'angioli, e caccasse ambracane; però vigilate, carissimi mei, quod amen amen dico vobis, che 'l sacrosanto Corbaccio è quel, che cava l'anime del limbo, e 'l corpo dell'inferno, e le borse del purgatorio. (Venier 2005, 34)

Venier uses a language with strong religious connotations to oppose Petrarch to Boccaccio. While the first misleads his devotees with his "incazziti fernetichi" to believe that women are angelic, the "fifth evangelist", according to Venier, announces the truth: in the Corbaccio, Boccaccio is thought to show the dangers and evilness of women, in accordance with the prevalent misogynistic perception of the book in the early modern period (Richardson 2017, 51–52). It is not so much Petrarch's style that is being attacked, but rather his deification of Laura, and the lack of 'truth' in his Canzoniere.

#### 1.10.5 Conclusions

Venier's short poem is misogynistic and purports to reveal the 'truth' about the dangerous nature of women, as opposed to the ideas of Petrarch and his followers. Venier is inspired by Aretino, he imitates his language and vituperative style. At the same time, Dante's invectives seem to be another significant model for Venier's style. But Venier does not attempt to create a new model for a chivalric poem, substituting Petrarch by Dante or by Aretino. Instead, he enjoys parodying the popular chivalric romance by inverting the heroic gestures of the protagonist, who is now a Venetian prostitute seeking sexual encounters all over Italy.

### 1.11 Letters

#### 1.11.1 Origins: Pietro Aretino's Lettere

As the approximately 540 volumes of letters, published between 1538 and 1627, testify, the genre of the libro di lettere was widespread in the Cinquecento (Quondam 1981, 30).116 The epistolary collection that announced the triumph of the genre in 1538, was Pietro Aretino's Primo libro delle lettere, a collection of letters addressed to influential persons, artists, writers, and other contemporary personalities. Drawing on the immediate public success of the work, numerous reprints followed within a few months, as well as the publication of five more volumes of letters by the same author between 1542 and 1557. However, Aretino's work appears significant not only for its popularity, but above all as a model for the success of the genre of the book of letters, as well as for the relevance of some individual letters of Aretino's within the anti-classicist literature of the Cinquecento.

#### 1.11.2 Text and edition history

The first book of Aretino's Lettere was published in January 1538. For the publication of this volume, Aretino avails himself of the opportunity to collaborate with his secretary Nicolò Franco, and his publisher Francesco Marcolini, who published the text in large folio format. The first volume of the Lettere presented itself thus as a "libro-dono destinato in primo luogo a nobili interlocutori, dalla cui protezione e munificenza Aretino si riprometteva le necessarie prebende e [. . .] per i quali non si poteva adottare il consueto piccolo formato dei testi in volgare." (Bertolo in Aretino 1997, 536). The text sparked great interest among ordinary readers as well, achieving a success that reached beyond the reception circle it seemed to be originally intended for. Several Venetian publishers responded to the strong market demand by producing, within a few months, four exemplary editions, which were based on the first edition by Marcolini but were printed in a practical octavo size.117 It was probably because of the intense competition that in September of the same year, Marcolini had another edition of the first edition printed, which, enriched with unpublished letters, was supposed to

We thank Angela Scapati for her valuable collaboration in the preparation of this chapter.

For a detailed description of these and other later reissues, see Bertolo in Aretino 1997, 533–616.

quicken the public interest. As the three re-editions, issued on behalf of various Venetian publishers between December 1538 and February 1539, demonstrate, this publication also enjoyed wide renown (Bertolo in Aretino 1997, 533–542).

In 1542, a second edition of the first book of the Lettere was published, again by Marcolini, which was presented as an "intenzionale superamento della prima edizione" (Bertolo in Aretino 1997, 545). The changes made to the text, edited by Lodovico Dolce, echo the changes Aretino apparently thought necessary after his break with Franco (cf. chap. 1.6). The names of the former collaborator and his brother were literally removed from the new edition. Nevertheless, the re-edition seemed to be intended not only to erase Franco's memory but also to meet new linguistic and literary requirements. According to Paolo Procaccioli (1996, 264–280), the version edited by Franco is linguistically less regular and more expressive than the edition by Ludovico Dolce. As a result, it appears more anti-Bembesque and more in line with Aretino's earlier theories. The layout of the re-edition by Dolce, on the other hand, contributes to an overall regularisation of the text.

Coinciding with the appearance of the new edition, Marcolini published the second volume of the Lettere (Aretino 1547b). This was followed by a third (1546), fourth (1550a) and fifth volume (1550b), which were printed by various Venetian publishers. Following the publication of his own letters to others, Aretino had two volumes of Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino (1551, 1552) published by Marcolini. The sixth volume of the Lettere was published posthumously in 1557; however, this collection strongly differs from Aretino's conception of a libro di lettere, which difference can be understood as a sign of an editorial intervention staged in the author's absence (Bertolo in Aretino 2001, 421).

The innovation introduced by Aretino served in turn as a model for the numerous collections of letters that were published during the Cinquecento. First of all, Aretino's collaborators Nicolò Franco and Anton Francesco Doni were influenced by it: the former published the Pistole vulgari in 1539, the latter a collection of Lettere subdivided into two books; the first edition of the two volumes was published in 1544 and 1547 respectively. Even though the model soon circulated beyond Aretino's circle of collaborators, as shown for example by Vittoria Colonna's Litere (1544), the author remained the main protagonist of the genre until 1546 (Quondam 1981, 40). Between the publication of the third and fourth volume of the Aretinian Lettere, the genre gradually became associated with new names like Niccolò Martelli, Orazio Brunetti and Antonio Minturno,<sup>118</sup> and finally with the main actors of a novel phase of the books of

Martelli 1546, Brunetto 1543, Minturno 1549.

letters: Pietro Bembo (1548, 1551, 1552), Bernardo Tasso (1549) and Claudio Tolomei (1547) (Quondam 1981, 39–40). This period also witnessed the emergence of collections that specialised in a certain type of letters like 'facete', 'spirituali' and 'amorose'. <sup>119</sup> In addition to books of letters by a single author, collections of letters by different authors became widespread from 1542 onwards, following the publication of two books in Venice by Navò and Manuzio.<sup>120</sup> These were again followed by collections of letters that were arranged according to more specific parameters, such as the Lettere di molte valorose donne and the Consolatorie di diversi autori, both compiled by Ortensio Lando (Lando 1548, 1550).<sup>121</sup>

As far as modern critical editions are concerned, the main reference is the Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Pietro Aretino, which includes six volumes of the Lettere (Aretino 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002) and two volumes of the Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino (2003, 2004). Further editions dedicated exclusively to Aretino's letters on art have also been published, including the edition prepared by Ettore Camesasca (Aretino 1957–1960) and the more recent edition by Paolo Procaccioli (Aretino 2003).

#### 1.11.3 Research

Because of its nature and the biographical evidence it provides, the book of letters has for a long time received only little scholarly attention, and it has been treated as a kind of unspecific paratext (Genovese 2002, 206). One of the aspects that research on Aretino's Lettere has shown considerable interest in, is the author's function regarding the work itself. The Lettere have been seen as an instrument of self-portrayal that Aretino, who must have sensed the great potential of the invention of printing, made use of.122 Moreover, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, Aretino's work on the Lettere has been

For an analysis of these types of letters from the perspective of the letterbook genre, see Quondam 1981, 89–119. On the books of letters published in the wake of Aretino see also de Nichilo 1981.

It deals respectively with the Lettere de diversi eccellentissimi signori a diversi huomini scritte and Delle lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini, et eccellentissimi ingegni in diverse materie.

For an exhaustive list of letter books that appeared between 1538 and 1627, see the chronology in Quondam (ed.) 1981, 319–326. On the Sulle Lettere di molte valorose donne see Bellucci 1981.

Larivaille 1980, 313–315 and 351–357; Genovese 2002, 225–226; Martelli 2003, 863; Genovese 2008, 201–211; Fantappiè 2018, 209; Cupperi 2019, 219–220.

compared to that of a journalist working in an 'editorial office' before the term was coined.123 More recent criticism has strongly relativised this theory (Fantappiè 2018, 211).

In contrast to interpretations of the Lettere that focus on Aretino as a historical figure, there are studies which analyse the work in the context of the book of letters as a literary genre, emphasising the role of Aretinian Lettere in the emergence and diffusion of the genre.<sup>124</sup> In addition, critics have focused on the influence of Erasmus of Rotterdam, and especially on the importance of his Opus de conscribendis epistolis, on Aretino's books of letters.<sup>125</sup>

Many letters in Aretino's epistolary corpus are either addressed to artists of the era126 or deal with questions concerning the figurative arts. Some contributions analyse the letters addressed to contemporary artists and those that deal with works of art.127 More generally, the theoretical and poetological implications of Aretino's letters have also been examined.128 Some of the letters touch upon the subject of the relationship between nature and art, which has been discussed in studies that examine Aretino's letters in relation to the concept of anti-classicism (Borsellino 1975, 9–16; Sandrini 2022). In addition, literary scholarship has dealt with the description of the so-called Sogno di Parnasso in the letter written on December 6, 1537 (Cairns 1985, 231–249, Perrone 1995).

#### 1.11.4 Analysis

The Aretinian concept of the book of letters differs strongly from the epistolary writings that were previously printed in the vernacular, including, for example, the letters of St. Catherine of Siena or those of Francesco Filelfo. As opposed to other collections of letters, which were commonly printed after the death of their author, Aretino himself compiled his collection for printing. This approach is clearly visible both in the modifications that were applied to the letters before their publication, as well as in the strict selection of the letters – not so much in the selection of those letters that were written before the collection was created, as in the choice of letters to be written specifically for publication and perhaps

Nicolini 1913, 406; Brognoligo 1914, 141; Pompeati-Lucchini 1946, 497.

Innamorati 1957, 230–236; Larivaille 1980, 220–263; Quondam 1981; Longo 1981; Basso 1990; Baldassarri 1995; Genovese 2002, 206–207; Genovese 2009; Larivaille 2021.

Cairns 1985, 125–161; Procaccioli 1997, 30–33; Procaccioli 1999b; Martelli 2003, 870.

On Aretino's relationship to various artists of his time, see Larivaille 1997, 258–289.

Favaro 2019; Cupperi 2019; Carrara 2020; Grosso 2020; Procaccioli 2020; Cottrell 2021.

Larivaille 1980, 256–263; Larivaille 2003; Nicolini 2019, D'Onghia 2020; Panzera 2022.

never sent at all. In this way, Aretino inverted the relationship between the letter and the book, adjusting the former to the latter and not the other way around (Baldassarri 1995, 158–164).

This particularity distinguishes the Aretinian book of letters from literary models that had previously become established in the field of epistolography. The influence of Erasmus' Opus de conscribendis epistolis, which was significant for the definition and distribution of the letter as a literary genre, is visible in individual letters but does not concern the book as a whole (Baldassarri 1995, 164), and, of course, there are Petrarch's Familiares and Seniles; but these are Latin models. Aretino's vernacular letters also differ from the 'familiar' letter (and at least indirectly from the Ciceronian corpus), because they only occasionally contain information that one would expect to find in this type of letters. Thus, a conception of a letter appears "che è per intero [. . .] pubblica, pensata e costruita ab initio per l'occhio dei lettori" (Baldassarri 1995, 169).

The Lettere not only function as a model, but also provide guidance for the definition of poetological and theoretical positions. A letter, dated June 25, 1537, that is presented as a compendium of advice addressed to the young fellow writer Nicolò Franco, is particularly significant in this regard.<sup>129</sup> As this passage demonstrates, it underlines the essential difference between imitators and stealers:

E per dirvelo, il Petrarca e il Boccaccio sono imitati da chi esprime i concetti suoi con la dolcezza e con la leggiadria con cui dolcemente e leggiadramente essi andarono esprimendo i loro, e non da chi gli saccheggia non pur de i "quinci", de i "quindi", e de i "soventi", e de gli "snelli", ma de i versi interi. E quando sia che il Diavolo ci aciechi a trafugarne qualc'uno, sforziamoci di somigliarci a Vergilio, che svaligiò Omero, e al Sanazaro, che l'accocò a Vergilio, onde hanno avanzato de l'usura, e saracci perdonato. Ma il caccar sangue de i pedanti che vogliano poetare, rimoreggia de l'imitazione, e mentre ne schiamazzano ne gli scartabelli, la trasfigurano in locuzione, ricamandola con parole tisiche e in regola. (Aretino 1997, 231)

A potential point of reference for this differentiation could be Petrarch's letters to Boccaccio, in which the theft of a whole set of expressions and verses is distinguished from an original appropriation of literary models.<sup>130</sup> In addition to this distinction, the letter stresses the dichotomy between 'nature' and 'art', identifying the former as the principle that should guide the writer:

In the editions following the break between Aretino and Franco, the name of the latter was replaced by that of Lodovico Dolce.

Sandrini 2022, 264; the reference is to Familiares XXII 2 and XXIII 19. The distinction between imitation and theft is also a subject of Francesco Berni's Dialogo contra i poeti (Friede 2022a).

O turba errante, io ti dico e ridico che la poesia è un ghiribizzo de la natura ne le sue allegrezze, il qual si sta nel furor proprio, e, mancandone il cantar Poetico diventa un cimbalo senza sonagli, e un campanil senza campane. Per la qual cosa chi vuol comporre, e non trae cotal grazia da le fasce, è un zugo infreddato. [. . .] E' certo ch'io imito me stesso perché la natura è una compagnona badiale che ci si sbracca, e l'arte una piattola che bisogna che si appicchi. Sí che attendete a esser scultor di sensi, e non miniator di vocaboli. (Aretino 1997, 231–232)

According to Borsellino (1975), this letter represents "la summa delle argomentazioni antiregolistiche dei 'discepoli della natura'" (12), in that it summarizes the key points of an anti-classicist poetics characteristic to the works of Pietro Aretino, Francesco Berni, Ruzante, Benvenuto Cellini and other authors of the Cinquecento. This poetics is revealed "nel concorde rifiuto dei modelli letterari" (10), to which anti-classicists oppose nature as the only model. Nature is thought to be superior to art because it is spontaneous and unpredictable rather than the result of imitation and study. However, in the letter above, imitation is not entirely rejected, but only if it leads to servile dependency on models. Further, Borsellino's definition of nature as spontaneity and unpredictability does not correspond to the associations to which the term is linked in other letters of Aretino. There, natura is often associated with the terms ingegno and giudizio, which, as Cristina Panzera (2022) shows, Aretino uses mainly to emphasise the originality and autonomy of literary expression rather than its total spontaneity.

Aretino's perception of the concept of natura should therefore be understood as a defence of a literary and artistic practice that is based on the autonomous appropriation of models (Procaccioli 1999a, 20–24). Moreover, the opposition between nature and art, as construed in Aretino's letter, hardly represents an anti-classicist poetics that can be extended to texts by other authors. Even though the term natura is evoked also in other anti-classicist texts, for example in Bernesque capitoli, its implications vary greatly according to the genre that the work belongs to. It therefore cannot be considered as the fundamental element of a common anti-classicist theoretical basis (Sandrini 2022).

#### 1.11.5 Conclusions

Pietro Aretino's Lettere are significant primarily for their poetological statements which, as shown in the examples above, refer to the status and role of literary models. In this way, a distinction emerges between pedantic imitation of models and their independent, original treatment. This differentiation is associated in Aretino's letters with the juxtaposition of arte and natura, whereby arte refers to a rigidly standardised way of writing, natura to an autonomous appropriation of literary models. However, no comprehensive anti-classicist poetics can be derived from these positions that could be directly transferred to texts by other authors. Even though the concept of natura in particular is taken up in other genres discussed, it remains definitionally vague and thus cannot be traced back to a common theoretical basis.

### Marc Föcking, Daniel Fliege 2 Implicit Anti-classicism

Imitating and Exhausting Old and New Classicisms in Spiritual Tragedy and Spiritual Petrarchism

## 2.1 Possibilities and impossibilities of spiritual tragedy (Marc Föcking)

### 2.1.1 Christian challenges to classicist models of tragedy

In 1542, an extraordinary work appeared in Rome, a Greek tragedy on the suffering and death of Christ called Χριστòς πάσχων or Sancti Gregorii Nazanzeni theologi tragoedia, Christus patiens. It was extraordinary because the author was supposedly the Greek Church Father Gregory of Nazianzus (died 390), renowned for his Trinatarian theology, who was awarded the honorary title of "theologos". Moreover, it was also exceptional because the suffering and death of Christ were not literarised as a vernacular sacra rappresentazione, but as a tragedy in the "verses of Euripides" (Christus paschon 1542, p. 1r.). And, last but not least, also because the printer and publisher Antonius Bladius dedicated the work to Marcello Cervini, the bibliophile cardinal and confidant of Paul III. Here, the highest theological authorship, the highest classical genre and a great literary dignity went hand in hand with the highest possible position of the protagonist and the highest dedicatee. All this combined to form an unequivocal commitment to spiritual tragedy, in fact to its superiority over secular tragedy. The Χριστòς πάσχων became the parameter of a series of tragedies on the passion and death of Christ in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Coriolano Martirano, also a cardinal and participant of the Council, wrote his Latin "tragoedia" Christus in 1542, which was published in Naples in 1556, together with his secular tragedies and comedies such as Medea, Electra, Hyppolitus, Bacchae, Phoenissae, Cyclops, Prometheus, Plutus (see Fanelli 2011, 280–301). As early as in 1549, the Neapolitan academic Giovanni Domenico di Lega published his tragedy Morte di Christo, the first vernacular tragedy on Christ's death and one that referenced Pseudo-Gregory's play (see Föcking 2020). Di Lega's text was followed by the Latin "tragoediae" Christus patiens and Christus Iudex written by the Jesuit Stefano Tucci, the latter was performed in 1569, but published a good hundred years later (Tuccius 2011). In 1582 Curtio Faiani published his Passione di nostro signore in verso heroico in five acts in 1582 (see Nigra 1895), followed by Bonaventura Morone's "tragedia spirituale" Il mortorio di Christo eighteen years later (Morone 1611). In 1611 Domenico Treccio wrote his Christo penoso, e moriente (Treccio 1611). Many others followed in the Seicento (see Nigra/Orsi 1895).

This invention and implementation of a tragedia sacra, which, like the sacra rappresentazione, draws its themes from the New and Old Testaments and Christian martyrologies – though its forms are oriented towards the 'rinascita' of Greek and Roman theatre – began in the middle of the sixteenth century, years before the heyday of the Jesuit theatre in the seventeenth century. From the very beginning it was written in the vernacular and in Latin by laymen such as Giovanni di Lega, or members of the secular clergy such as Coriolano Martirano and Paolo Bozzi, and by clergymen of all orders like the Jesuit Stefano Tucci or the Franciscan Bonaventura Morone da Taranto. And it ran parallel and in close debate with one of the most important poetological developments of the secondo Cinquecento: the editing, translation and commentary of Aristotle's Poetics, which, together with Alessandro de' Pazzi's Latin translation (1536), the commentaries of Robortello (1548) and Maggi/Lombardi (1550), as well as Bernardo Segni's Italian translation (1549), became the catalyst for an extremely lively poetological discussion in relation to tragedy that determined the second half of the century. Despite all the plurality of different ideas about the contents, forms and functions of tragedy, fed into this discussion from antiquity and late antiquity, one feature remains indispensable: the "exitus infelix" of the tragedy plot (Scaliger 1994–2011, I, 132). The protagonists are for their most part neither flawless nor depraved, but "medius inter bonum et malum" (Robortello 1548/1968, 130, after Poetics 13, 1453a8–10). They fall into misfortune and death due to individual wrongdoing stemming from "imprudentia" or "ignorantia" (Maggi/Lombardi 1550/1969, 155).

These characteristics of a tragedy based on classical models and Aristotelian theories, but also on those put forward by Plato, Horatius, Diomedes, etc., which in the Cinquecento were presented in various shades and interpretations, are challenged by a spiritual tragedy in which Christ, both true God and true man, becomes in everything equal to man "absque paccato" (Hebr 4:14): he can neither be a 'middle hero' of the Aristotelian line of argumentation, nor is his exitus through crucifixion theologically an exitus infelix, since his sacrifice is followed by the resurrection and redemption of sinful man. What was true of Christ as the first martyr also applies to all martyrs after him: they may have human faults, but misfortune has not fallen upon them out of their own "imprudentia" or "ignorantia" (Maggi/Lombardi 1550/1969, 155). Nor is their death a misfortune or a punishment at all, but the first step towards happiness and the path to salvation since, according to the Christian view of the Apostle Paul, the values of life and death are reversed: "Mihi enim vivere Christus est, et mori lucrum" (Phil 1:21).

Can there be a Christian tragedy in the Cinquecento at all, or is Christian tragedy not an oxymoron? Are Christian protagonists, for whom even the most terrible martyrdom is enough to bring happiness in the afterlife and who are above any mediocritas, compatible with the poetics of the secular tragedy in Cinquecento classicism? The writers of spiritual tragedies answered these questions in the affirmative and called into question whether a Christian tragedy can only be an explicitly anti-classical one, based on a completely different concept of tragedy. Rather, they strived to position themselves within what was usually labelled by them an 'Aristotelian' and classicist frame of reference, yet creatively using its gaps, contradictions and alternative theories to accommodate the specifically Christian semantics of the Bible and of church history into tragedies that want to be 'classicist', but which, underhandedly, modify, extend and overstretch the theoretical framework in such a way as that the result can be described as 'implicitly anti-classicist'.

#### 2.1.2 Three perspectives

The answer to this seeming contradiction, which Corneille was not the first to point out in his examination of the Polyeucte ("si la Passion de Jésus-Christ et les martyres des saints doivent être exclus du théâtre à cause qu'ils passent cette mediocre bonté", Corneille 1968, II, 8) differs depending on how one defines classicism and classicist tragedy. At least three different distinct viewpoints exist: 1. a panoramic-retrospective one, which leans towards an essentialist concept of tragedy and the tragic, historically drawing on seventeenth-century French classicism. 2. one that is diametrically opposed to it, but is equally retrospective 'from below', mapping the poetological landscape of Cinquecento tragedy not only as plural, but as pluralistic, thus eliminating any notion of classicism. 3. a historical-contextual participant one of authors of the tragedia sacra, as well as of poetologists of the Cinquecento, registrating every possible resistance of the secular and especially the classical or archaising norms to Christian content and function. Taking these ideas as a starting point, a complex of norms emerges ex negativo, for which a contemporary term comparable to 'classicism' is not available, but which nevertheless finds its labels implying a normativity of classical antiquity and its revitalisation in the Cinquecento à la "i greci legga chi ciò brama" (Di Lega 1549, s.p.) or "i precetti di Aristotile" (Grillo 1616, 512).

#### 2.1.2.1 'Classicist' essentialism and the impossibility of spiritual tragedies

A simultaneously essentialist, reductive, anachronistic and retrospective conception of tragedy attributes on the one hand the only 'true' and 'genuine' tragedy to Greek antiquity ("Il n'y a qu'une tragédie au monde, c'est la grecque", Festugière 1969, 11), on the other hand, it is based on the theatrical norms of the French siècle classique in the seventeenth century. If these norms are projected back to conditions prevalent during the sixteenth century in Italy, the question of compatibility or incompatibility between tragedy and Christian themes can only lead to the exclusion of the latter. The 'classicist' impossibility of Christian tragedy in this sense was already formulated by Saint-Évremond at the end of the seventeenth century, polemicizing against Corneille: "Le Théâtre perd tout son agrément dans la représentation des choses saintes, et les choses saintes perdent beaucoup de la religieuse opinion qu'on leur doit, quand on les représente sur le Théâtre" (Saint-Évremond 1969, IV, 174–175). In 1743, the Jesuit Francesco Saverio Quadrio turned against the tradition of Jesuit tragedy of his own order (and also against Corneille's Polyeucte) with an impetus typical for the Enlightenment when he declared that tragedy required catharsis through and from "compassione, e il terrore". Therefore, the "martiri, e i Santi, esser non possono suggetti capaci di Tragedia", because their fate made the audience rather "temerarii, e fanatici, che [. . .] virtuosi, e saggi" (Quadrio 1743, 232). A good twenty years later, Lessing, like Quadrio, also takes a sceptical view of the possibility of Christian tragedy, first because of the absence of catharsis, but even more so because of the impossibility of a failing of the Christian protagonist. After all, he (or she) is destined for salvation and heavenly bliss:

Selbst der Polyeukt des Corneille ist [. . .] tadelhaft; [. . .] so dürfte die erste Tragödie, die den Namen einer christlichen verdienet, ohne Zweifel noch zu erwarten sein. Ich meine ein Stück, in welchem einzig der Christ als Christ uns interessieret. Ist ein solches Stück aber auch wohl möglich? Ist der Charakter des wahren Christen nicht etwa ganz untheatralisch? Streiten nicht die stille Gelassenheit, die unveränderliche Sanftmut, die seine wesentlichsten Züge sind, mit dem ganzen Geschäfte der Tragödie, welche Leidenschaften durch Leidenschaften zu reinigen sucht? [. . .] Bis ein Werk des Genies [. . .]diese Bedenklichkeiten unwidersprechlich widerlegt, wäre also mein Rat: – man ließe alle bisherigen christlichen Trauerspiele unaufgeführt. (Lessing 1967, 128f.).

Even Corneille's Polyeukt is [. . .] blameworthy; [..] so the first tragedy that deserves the name of being Christian is undoubtedly still to be expected. I mean a play in which only the Christian as Christian interests us. But is such a play possible at all? Is not the character of the true Christian quite untheatrical? Do not the quiet composure, the unchanging gentleness which are his most essential traits, conflict with the whole business of tragedy, which seeks to purify passions by passions? [. . .] Until a work of genius [. . .] refutes these doubts, my advice would therefore be: – leave all previous Christian tragedies unperformed. (my translation)

Departing from Lessing, this view of the impossibility of Christian tragedy extends to Schiller's essay "On the Sublime", which is based on the inevitability of a death not transcended by Christian metaphysics (Hoxby 2015, 15). There is also Goethe's dictum to F. von Müller on 6 June 1824 "Everything that is tragic is founded on an unbalanced opposition. As soon as balance occurs or is possible, the tragic disappears" (Goethe 1950, 349, my translation). Finally, the theory is taken up by I.A. Richards and George Steiner's The Death of Tragedy (1968): any "happy ending" would destroy the tragic, the "norm of tragedy" is contradicted by any form of "compensation", and since, as with Schiller, Christianity offers precisely this compensation through eternal life, there can be "no specific Christian mode of tragic drama even in the noontime of faith [. . .]. Christianity is an anti-tragic vision of the world" (Steiner 1968, 332, see Hoxby 2015, 14–26). In a similarly essentialist manner, Charles Mazouer decrees as late as in 2015: "Il ne peut donc y avoir, à la vérité, de tragique biblique, dès l'Ancien Testament. La Loi Nouvelle, qui propose un Dieu uniquement défini par l'Amour, répugne encore plus au tragique; le tragique chrétien est encore plus impensable que le tragique biblique" (Mazouer 2015, 406).

This master narrative of (neo-)ancient tragedy vs. Christian anti-tragedy is combined in Corneille ("mediocré bonté"), Lessing ("passions purified by passions") and Steiner ("a Christian hero can be an occasion for sorrow but not for tragedy", Steiner 1968, 332) with a set of specific elements that are grosso modo associated with "neo-Aristotelian precepts" (Steiner 1968, 24) and with the term "classicist"/"classicism" (e. g., Steiner 1968, 24). Lohse (2015, 13–59 et passim) meticulously traces the history of this narrowing identification of classicism and Aristotelian poetics, common in twentieth-century Renaissance scholarship, and, in particular, the retrojection of the normative structure of, for example, the trois unités of seventeenth-century French classicism onto the poetological and theatrical practices of sixteenth-century Italy, beginning as early as in the seventeenth century (see Lohse 2015, 31): in nineteenth-century criticism – for instance in De Sanctis (1983 II 683) – the "'scrivere classico'" and an 'Aristotelian' monopoly on norms coagulate into a fixed binomial, one that is the same in influential studies, especially those carried out by Joel Spingarn's A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (Spingarn 1899/1924), Bernard Weinberg's A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Weinberg 1961) and Marvin T. Herrick's Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance (1965). The validity of this binomial has been recounted in Italian literary studies since the 1970s (e.g. Ariani 1974, 179; Battaglia/ Mazzacurati 1974, 128; Borsellino 1983, 72; Tateo 1996, 482), as well as in German studies (Drost 1980, 481; Hösle 1984, 52). This amalgam of "Aristotelian rules and neoclassical practice" (Herrick 1965, 265) can only define the tragedia sacra as a paradox and the texts, largely ignored by scholarship and never promoted to the canon of Italian tragedies of the Cinquecento, only as a-classical or anti-classical pseudo-tragedies. They have found no place in relevant research studies (eg. Ariani 1976; Bragantini 2001) or in anthologies (Ariani [ed.] 1977) on Italian Cinquecento tragedy.

#### 2.1.2.2 Sceptical dismantling of an Aristotelian theoretical framework

Justified and well-founded doubts about the concept of a poetological Aristotelianism, which would have given the tragedy production of the secondo Cinquecento a rigid and comprehensive system of norms, can be found in isolated studies as early on as in the 1930s to 1960s (Zonta 1934; Tigerstedt 1968), then increasingly since the 1970s (Tatarkiewicz 1970/1980, III, 214–250). It became apparent that the Poetics was of little use as a binding normative repertoire and that contemporary commentaries, poetics and discussions were "inventive, exploratory, even permissive in their dilation of Aristotle" (Cave 1988, 83). Widely available since 1538 (Pazzi's Latin translation) and 1548 (Robortello's commentary) at the latest, the Poetics became a vanishing point for a multitude of quite different poetological concepts following those put forward by Plato, Diomedes, Donatus, and, in particular, Horace (Tatarkiewicz 1970/1980, III, 215–217; Hoxby 2015, 57–108; Lohse 2015), which fuelled the poetics and the practice of tragedy in the early Cinquecento. They used "Aristotle's terms as a scaffold on which to hang a vast collection of ancient testimonies that elucidated, complicated, or contradicted Aristotle" (Hoxby 2015, 57). Instead of extrapolating "Aristotelian rules" (Herrick 1965, 265), which supposedly stemmed directly from the Poetics, scholars now map the various layers of poetological knowledge that enter into the readings and interpretations of Aristotle's Poetics and reconstruct their horizons of an understanding – one that is far from being consensual. The darkness of the Poetics, according to Giraldi (1543, 2), the "cose oscure scritte da Aristotele" (Castelvetro 1570, dedica s.p.) and its sketchiness ("prima forma rozza, imperfetta, & non polita", Castevetro 1570, dedica, s.p.) could for this very reason become a motor for commentary and theory without producing uniform interpretations. A type of research that utilises a perspective that gets up close and personal so to speak on the theoretical debates of the secondo Cinquecento, discovers a teeming world full of differences, contradictions, misinterpretations, and idiosyncrasies, for which the label of poetological Aristotelianism is just as unsuitable as that of a 'classicism' impregnated with it and its French classicistic aftermath. Lohse (2015, 266) considers "the talk of 'classicism' [. . .] largely [to be] useless in the context of a formation of modern tragedy", and not only that: the grassroots view of theoretical discussions and tragedy production dissolving into myriads of differences, produces an agnostic position of doubt about the "assertion [. . .], that the Renaissance had a primary interest in 'normative fixation' [Buck 1972, IX, 40]" (Lohse 2015, 101, my translation). Thus, the interplay of plurality and its coping strategies, which have been recognised as one of the essential signatures of the Cinquecento (see Stempel/Stierle 1987; Hempfer 1993b; Föcking/Huss 2003; Müller/ Oesterreicher/Vollhardt 2010; Beuvier etc. 2021), and for which precisely the authority of Aristotle's Poetics releasing and binding the plural theoretical positions is good evidence, is replaced by the pluralism of hierarchically indistinct phenomena that are not accessible to any unifying principle whatsoever. Whereas the retrospective approach, working with the Aristotelian/classical binomial, inevitably leads to the opposition of tragedia and sacro, and to the theoretical impossibility of the tragedia sacra, the problem is simply non-existent from a grassroots viewpoint, simply because the norms of a (mutual) exclusion have been dissolved. This lack of awareness of the problem then leads to the fact that sacred theatre – tragedia sacra as well as sacra rappresentazione – is hardly considered to be a separate problem area of Cinquecento theatre and is consequently (as for Lohse) "only selectively taken into account" (Lohse 2015, 59, n.186).

#### 2.1.2.3 The Poetics as a frame of reference and the participant perspective

The third view of the problems surrounding the tragedia sacra, as it is to be dealt with subsequently, is that of the participant's perspective. From this perspective, the view from 'above'/'outside' of the poetological discussion of the secondo Cinquecento is combined with that from 'within'/'below': the authors of tragedie sacre constantly name a decidedly 'Aristotelian' framework of norms, which raises questions relating to the justification and validity of their own enterprise, but at the same time, by grasping the chances of contemporary interpretative diversity, they try to find a place within (or at least on the margins of) a poetological spectrum flagged as conforming to Aristotle.

Far from allowing an Aristotelian bias to be imposed on them only retrospectively, authors of tragedie sacre and spiritual poetologists of the second Cinquecento name first "i greci", and then, in a monopolising way, Aristotle as the frame of reference for their own reflections on sacred tragedy. An explicit distinction from a complex of norms that can be traced back to ancient tragedy and poetics is usually made. For Giovan Dominico di Lega's Morte di Cristo (1549), "i Greci [. . .] e gli altri/C'hanno il Tragico dir tanto honorato" (di Lega 1549, s.p. [prologo]) form the horizon of expectation, whereby basic Aristotelian issues (here from Poetics cap. 9, 1451b) of this "Tragico dir" are invoked by neuralgic terms such as "se d'Historia/O di fabula narrasi l'effetto". A similar recusatio is also used by Stefano Tucci in the two prologues of Christus iudex dating from 1569 and 1572: "Non damus Oedipodas, non eruta Pergama Grais,/[. . .]/ Mendacem haud poterant divina oracula vatem/nec rerum pietas ethnica iura pati" (Tuccius 2011, 148), whereby the pagan "vates mendax" Aristotle, in the version which was to be performed in front of Pope Gregory XIII in Rome (1572), is indeed used as an advocate of his own metrical decision against the iamb: "Cur si neque ars neque ipse Aristoteles vetat [. . .]" (Tuccius 2011, 272). In the Bibliotheca selecta (1593), his confrere Antonio Possevino, despite also referring to Horace "et alij", deals solely with what "pleases Aristotle" ("sicuti Aristoteli placet", Possevino 1593, 289). The secular cleric Paolo Bozzi, who published his Italian version of Christus Iudex in 1596, ponders in the preface the (denied) compatibility with the "precetti di quel valente filosofo" (Bozzi 1596, s.p. [dedica]). At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Benedictine Angelo Grillo, in his detailed poetological evaluation of Malatesta Porta's plays I santi innocenti (1604), did not call into doubt that "Aristotele è oracolo delle scuole", which raised the question: "se si possano fare Tragedie al modo Christiano di uomini Santi, salvi i precetti di Aristotele" (Grillo 1616, 530, 512). Porta himself raised this question polemically in the preface to his play labelled "tragedia": he believed he was dreaming with his eyes open, "udendo, ch'altri creda, &affermi, e v'habbia chi per aventura scriva, che non siano i Santi nostri Martiri soggetti di nobile Tragedia, e che non bene si possano i loro martiri trattare conforme à poetici precetti" (Porta 1604, All'illustre [. . .] Ludovico Marchiselli [s.p.]).

Ten years later, the Franciscan Bonaventura Morone, in the preface to his La Giustina. Tragedia spirituale, again addressed the question of the relevance of the "regole d'Aristotele" for his martyr drama (Morone 1634/1612, A'suoi carissimi Tarentini [s.p]). As early on as 1600, in Il mortorio di Christo, he had discussed the the compatibility of Judas' stage suicide with "le regole d'Aristotele" (Morone 1620/ 1611, 160). The "precetti", "regole" or even "prohibitions" ("Aristoteles vetat", Tuccius 2011, 272) are obviously understood by the authors to be normative standards for the composition of tragedies, which for them seem to have been passed down directly from the Poetics, mostly without being filtered through contemporary commentaries or sposizioni. Grillo alone mentioned "Castelvetro, & da altri espositori" alongside the "precetti d'Aristotele" (Grillo 1616, 512). The awareness of the presence of regole, which at the end of the century is strongly linked to the filtering of Aristotelian poetics through Castelvetros La poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta (1570), is thus as clearly present on this side of the argument thanks to Grillo as on the other side thanks to Giovanni Battista Marino: in his letter to Gierolamo Preti in 1624, he still ascribed to the "mente d'Aristotele" and the "cacciare il naso dentro al Castelvetro" the normative authority of the "regole", which one must know in order to be able to break them (Marino 1967, 227–228). The sacred tragedians neither joined Marino's position of rule breaking, nor the minority position of an irregular, non-Aristotelian and anti-normative poetics, such as that of the Dominican Tommaso Campanella, who was repeatedly accused of heresy by the Inquisition and who stated in his Poetica italiana 1596: "chi ha paura di trasgrediere li precetti è umile, basso, e vile dicitore" (Campanella 1977, 363). Instead, they named (and integrated) the "regole" and "precetti", especially where the "aristotelico theatro" (Grillo 1616, 530) poses problems for the dramatisation of sacred material. From this description of the problem arises, ex negativo, the normative horizon against which and with which the tragedia sacra has to operate.

There is an indisputable awareness of the genre 'tragedy' and its differences from the traditional sacra rappresentazione, which the authors display with their choice of the genre designation 'tragedia', 'tragedia sacra' or 'tragedia spirituale'. An analysis of the genre designations of the sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury tragedy texts listed in EDIT 16 (https://edit16.iccu.sbn.it/) and elsewhere (e.g. see Riccoboni 1730, 101–130; Quadrio 1743, 61–87; Haym 1771, 273–308; Lohse 2015, 670–671) shows that plays labelled as 'sacra rappresentazione' appear in large numbers throughout the Cinquecento and Seicento, but that genre designations as 'commedia spirituale' or 'tragedia spirituale/sacra' only began to emerge slowly after the middle of the century (Cox 2020, 18), i.e. alongside the beginning of the peak phase of the reception of Aristotle' Poetics.

Terminological uncertainties persist, however: D'Ancona (1891, 379) recorded an illuminatingly unsuccessful attempt to designate a "Commedia ovvero Tragedia di Santa Teodora" (1554) in his study of southern Italian sacre rappresentazioni. The problem of a worldly unhappy ending with a simultaneous metaphysical happy ending of heavenly reward is directly reflected in the title and already marks one of the main problems within this discussion. In 1549, Giovanni di Lega chose the simple title "Tragedia" for Morte di Christo, but because of the "felice morte" he also used the generic title "Tragicomedia" (di Lega 1549, Al signor Leonardo Curzi, s.p.). Towards the end of the century, however, the generic title 'tragedia sacra/tragedia spirituale' or even "Hiero-Tragedia" had become established. Liviera, who coined the term "Hiero-Tragedia" in 1593, marks the consciousness of difference to the "Tragedie ordinarie" (Liviera 1593/1605, "All'Illustriss. Signor Marino Grimani, s.p.), for example, in relation to the exitus infelix/felix, but at the same time also recognised the observance of essentially other elements of the expectation horizon of tragedy: the sacro is not merely an addition to the tragedia, but it intervenes into its structure in a modifying fashion. With the postponement of more than half a century, a similar differentiation and modification of classicist genre designations was thus realized in the field of sacred drama, as well as in the sacred lyric poetry of the 1540s, which expanded the designation 'rime' referring to Petrarch's canonisation to 'rime spirituali/rime sacre', signalling at the same time imitatio and a

specifically Christian licence to semantic change (see Föcking 1994, 54–61; Föcking, "Rime spirituali 1550", in course of print a; Fliege, below).

The test here is the scrupulous attitude of Paolo Bozzi, who published a classicist tragedy Cratasiclea in 1591 (see Lohse 2015, 373–376). However, he called his Italian version of Stefano Tucci's Latin "tragedia" Christus iudex (1569/1572) in 1596 a "semplice rappresentazione": his precise knowledge of secular tragedy poetics left him no choice in view of the subject matter, which for him was not suitable for tragedy: "[N]ostra intentione non è stata di fare una Tragedia, ò Comedia (non sofferendo ciò il soggetto" (Bozzi 1596, dedica s. p., cf. Föcking in course of print b).

What elements this horizon of expectation, mostly traced back to the "precetti" or "regole d'Aristotele", does embrace and what problems it raises for the sacred tragedy of the second half of the Cinquecento, can be seen in the poetological remarks made by Giovan Domenico di Lega about La morte di Christo, the archetype of the vernacular Christ tragedies towards the middle of the century, Angelo Grillo's letters on Malatesta Porta's I santi innocenti a good 50 years later (Porta 1604; Grillo 1616), as well as a number of other texts. Di Lega drew heavily on his knowledge of ancient tragedies (Christus paschon) as well as vernacular secular tragedies, especially the quite controversial tragedies of Giraldi Cinzio, interspersed with some elements of pre-Aristotelian and Aristotelian theories. It thus marked the tentative beginning of a poetological discussion, at the argumentative end of which are Grillo's expositions of Malatesta Porta's Tragedia sacra I santi innocenti of 1604 (see Apollonio 2007, Sarnelli 2009, Nendza 2020, 179–184). At about the end of the Cinquecento's theory debates, Grillo offered a consolidated theoretical arsenal of "precetti d'Aristotele" and an awareness of their being filtered by "Castelvetro, & da altri espositori" (Grillo 1616, p. 512). Common to all authors, however, is the question, "se si possano fare Tragedie al modo Christiano di uomini Santi, salvi i precetti di Aristotele" (Grillo 1616, 512).

Obviously, the primary challenge for the authors of spiritual tragedies is the laying out of the tragic protagonists. For the Neapolitan academic Giovan Domenico di Lega, the "morte di terren Principi" (di Lega 1549, s.p.) is the nucleus of tragedy. Thus, di Lega did not start with the morally determined quality of the protagonist of the Poetics (1453a16–18), but rather with the determination of the protagonist by a high social status according to the humanist rhetoric and its coupling of social hierarchy and levels of styles which was decisive for the tragedies dating from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and also present in the later period, such as in Scaliger ("reges, principes ex urbibus, arcibus, castris; principia sedatoria, exitus horribiles; oratio gravis, culta, a vulgi dictione aversa; tota facies anxia; metus, minae, exsilia, mortes", Scaliger 1994, I, 130). For di Lega, Christ as the protagonist of tragedy was not a fundamental problem because, as the Prince of Heaven, he occupied the highest rank of all the "principi": "Che in essa non la morte di terren Principi, ne i successi degli huomini, ma l'unico patre, e morire di Gesù Christo figliuol di Dio si contiene" (di Lega 1549, s.p [I]).

In Sebastiano Minturno, a cardinal and author of two tracts on poetry, equipped with a keen eye for the relationship between classicist poetics and spiritual themes, one of the participants of the dialogue De Poeta (1559), Vopiscus, followed a similar path of tying the "magnificum, & praeclarum" to "illustres personae" (Minturno 1559/1970, 179). But this "illustre" should not necessarily be understood in terms of status, and it is Aristotelian because the author combined it with the protagonist's mediocritas alien to the rhetorical-humanist conception of tragedy. The protagonist of tragedy, according to Vopiscus, "neque summa probitate excellat neque improbitate sua". For Minturno, the justification for this medium character lies in the power of identification that can thereby be established with the tragic hero, "cum autem bonis quidem ipsi nos dispares esse agoscamus, mali autem dissimiles nostrum habeantur" (Minturno 1559/1970, 180) – and it is for this reason that misfortune befalls the protagonists due to human error ("errore quodam humano"), which could happen to anyone (see Kappl 2006, 248). Against this background, Vopiscus' respondent Summontius states that the death of Christ cannot be "tragicè deploranda" (Minturno 1559/ 1970, 182). The narrow limits ("angustiores [. . .] fines") of the theory of tragedy going back to Aristotle's Poetics, presented by Vopiscus, is thus clearly named as a reason for excluding a Christian tragedy.

Torquato Tasso also implicitly argues for this argument in the Discorsi dell'arte poetica e in particolare sopra il poema eroico (1587): he assigns different qualities to the "illustre [. . .] azione del tragico e quella dell'epico". To the "tragico" he allots an action characterised by "inespettata e subita mutazion di fortuna" of "persone né buone né cattive" and which excites "orrore e misericordia". The "epico" on the contrary demands "nelle persone il sommo delle virtù" and "eccelsa virtù bellica, sovra i fatti di cortesia", but also "di pietà, di religione" (Tasso 1977, 14). This allows Tasso to realise a spiritual epic "per esaltazione della Fede di Cristo" (Tasso 1977, 16), but not a tragedy in which either Christ or martyrs act as protagonists.

Two decades later, this recourse to the middle hero can also be found in Angelo Grillo's letters to Malatesta Porta on his Tragedia spirituale I santi innocenti (1604) and to Bernardino Steffonio S.J., with Crispus. Tragoedia (1597), one of the best-known exponents of Jesuit drama at the turn of the century (Steffonio 1998): even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, "Aristotile [è] [. . .] oracolo delle scuole" (Grillo 1616, 530) and the passage of the Poetics (1453a16–18) for the qualification of the protagonist "di mezzana costume, cioè né molto buona, né molto rea" (Grillo 1616, 512) is still relevant. Grillo, however, does not believe that this should be defined in an identificatory way, but in terms of a moderation of the "commiseratione" which should be achieved according to aesthetics of emotion: the suffering of a purely good figure would turn the spectator against the injustice of fate. Grillo insists that this point of view is the right one, arguing against Castelvetro's belief that the common people, believing in divine justice, would assume that some guilt lies behind every misfortune (Castelvetro 1570, 154v.), even in the case of an – almost – perfect martyr. The suffering of the purely evil protagonists, on the other hand, would be perceived as just punishment and the public would be led to gloat in the face of his suffering ("goderebbe del male altrui", Grillo 1616, 512). Grillo also justifies the specifically social fixation of the protagonists as "Eroi, & in Principi, & altre persone di Regio affare" founded on the greatest possible effectiveness of the plot and its ability to arouse "diletto". Grillo seems to have adopted the link between character and plot design and the arousal of the greatest possible "diletto" from Castelvetro (1570, 164r., 383v.), who obviously serves as his primary author of reference. Only "Eroi, & Principi" would not be prepared for a "sciagurato fine" due to their high status, which could explain why their surprise at their own fall generated the greatest interest from and pleasure for the audience:

Onde sentendo il popolo l'infelice fine di simili personaggi, quanto più gli riesce stravagante, & fiero, tanto maggiormente si diletta d'intendere incontra tali in persone grandi, & che non havrebbero mai pensato à caduta sì grave (Grillo 1616, 513)

This demand for a tragic fall from a metaphorical great height cannot apply to Christ or martyrs, since they hand themselves over to suffering and death with their eyes open so that their "caduta si grave" cannot surprise anyone – neither protagonists nor spectators.

In contrast to the rhetorical and social "illustre" of di Lega, for Grillo the susceptibility of tragic figures to fault follows from this "mezzano costume": misfortune befalls them through a "peccato" or "reato" ("che volendo Aristotele reato nella persona tragica principale", Grillo 1616, 513). Although this "peccato" is different from Minturno's blurred statement of "a certain human error" ("errore quodam humano", Minturno 1559/1970, 180), it nevertheless follows for the Benedictine that there seems to be no "Tragedie al modo Christiano" for immaculate "huomini Santi, salvi i precetti di Aristotile [. . .]" (Grillo 1616, 512) – but only "à prima vista".

The "tragedie al modo Christiano" are confronted with a further problem of Aristotelian requirements, relating to the question of reference to historical reality. Aristotle was not very coherent in his writings on this problem, formulating the opposition of historiography and poetry in the ninth chapter of the Poetics, but also leaving it up to the authors of tragedies to adhere to historical material in order to achieve probability (Poetics 1451b16–20). Against this background, the rhetorical consensus of the first half of the century, according to which the material of tragedy must be guaranteed by history or literary tradition, dissolved towards the middle of the century (Lohse 2010, 211–232). From that time onwards, Aristotle's commentators and poeticians emphasised the role of imagination, the stronger role of fiction justified by the concept of imitatio of possible human actions, and the stronger stage effectiveness of the "novità del soggetto" of "favole finte" (Giraldi 1554, 12f.). The problematic nature of this 'modern' Aristotelian requirement for tragedy, which competed further with the traditional humanist view "ex historiis argumenta" advocated, for example, by Scaliger in the second half of the century (Scaliger 1994–2011, III, 27), was already addressed by di Lega, when in the prologue to La morte di Christo he alluded to the current discussion "se d'Historia/O di fabula narrasi l'effetto" (di Lega 1549, s. p. [2]).

Twenty years later, for Castelvetro the alternative historia/favola shifted towards a preference for invented material as the subject matter of poetry, and of epic and tragedy in particular. He took the position that "poesia (. . .) diletta assai piu che non fa l'historia delle cose avvenute" (Castelvetro 1570, 17r.). But when he nevertheless envisaged historical material as appropriate to tragedy ("le tragedie [. . .] deono essere composte d'accidenti [. . .] che si possono domandare historici", Castelvetro 1570, 104v.), he showed that facticity of the historical was not a value in itself, but that historical plots served to heighten and facilitate the probable, especially in tragedy with its sublime personnel: "Non ci possiamo imaginare un re che non sia stato, ne attribuirgli alcuna attione" (Castelvetro 1570, 104v.) Historical subjects, however, can never be more than the nucleus of a plot, which is then subjected to the modes of representation of poetry (and not historiography). Poets who used the "materia d'historia" in the mode of the historian would do so out of an inability to "ben trovare cose simili al vero, & rassomigliarle", or would even have to accept accusations of fraudulent intentions if they were hiding historical material under "la scorza, & col colore delle parole poetiche" (Castelvetro 1570, 16r.–v.). This condemnation therefore applied to Latin authors such as Silius Italicus and Lukan, but also to his contemporary Girolamo Fracastoro, who he claimed should be expelled from the "schiera de poeti" and deprived of the "glorioso titolo della poesia" because of his Latin biblical epic Josephe (posth. 1555),

percio hanno trattata materia nelle loro scritture trattata prima dagl'historici, & quando non fosse anchora stata prima trattata dagl'historici, basta bene, che fosse prima avenuta, & non imaginata da loro (Castelvetro 1570, 16r.–v.).

Castelvetro repeated this strict judgement, which competed with other declarations by Castelvetro and Torquato Tasso (cf. Lohse 2010, 217) that were oriented towards the historia of tragedy, although 'at least', albeit in a patronising manner, he did not take away Fracastoro 's title of historian ("Il che è lode non picciola", Castelvetro 1570, 105r.–v.). His rebuke that Marco Girolamo Vida in his Christ Epic Christias (1535) narrated "le molte & miracolose attioni di Christo [. . .] come facevano que poeti biasimati da Aristotile", namely without establishing a unity of the favola beyond the figure of Christ (Castelvetro 1570, 98v.), amounted to an equation of the New Testament theme of Christ and historia: Vida would not tell his story like a "poeta", but like a historian "nell'historie, nelle quali si congiungono piu attioni diverse insieme" and in which "si convenga narrare tutte le cose avenute in un tempo" (Castelvetro 1570, 280v.).

The consequences of this painful verdict of Castelvetro against the poemata sacra, passed as 'Aristotelian', did not go unnoticed by ecclesiastical authors such as the Jesuit Antonio Possevino in his Bibliotheca selecta dating from 1593: as the "poetica Ethnicorum" demanded "una unius actio insignis tota" of a fictional, non-historical action ("omnis inveniendo [. . .] ne cum historia confundi videatur", Possevino 1593, 289), Aristotelians disregard Ennius "vel Vida, qui Chriti (sic) Domini vitam carmine heroico cecinit". Although Possevino named Aristotle, Horace "et alijs" as authorities of the "poetica Ethnicorum", for him the "praecepta" that hindered Christian material had clearly been narrowed down to those of Aristotelian poetics ("sicuti Aristoteli placet", 289), but seen through Castelvetro's eyes. That this also provided an argument against Christ's capacity for tragedy and the Christus patiens of Ps.-Gregory of Nazianzus ("nec item habetur apud eosdem absolutus Tragicus, qui Christus patientem inscripsit Tragoedium suam") was perfectly clear to the Jesuit.

Additionally, spiritual authors viewed it as the task of a (Christian) tragedy not to describe, like a historian, the completeness, unconnectedness and temporal-spatial extension of manifold actions, but to condense them, like any "poeta", into a plot line concentrated in space and time. Ex negativo, this meant for Paolo Bozzi that the subject of the rise and fall of the Antichrist and the Last Judgment, which is then set in motion by completely different protagonists – Christ and his angels – was not suitable for tragedy and could consequently only be treated as a "semplice rappresentazine". According to the "insegnamenti d'Aristotile", the action of the tragedy should last "non pur d'un giro di Sole" (Bozzi 1596, dedica, s.p.). This is not given in his Giudicio universale, so the play is not a tragedy. Bozzi suggested that the unity of time "as far as possible within a single Sun's Circulation" (Poetics 144b10), which in Aristotle derives from the unity of action, becomes an autonomous characteristic of tragedy. Here, Castelvetro's reversal of reasoning is possibly at play, as it was his belief that the unity of space and time follow on from the "luogo stretto" of the stage and how receptive a given audience is, and from which the unity of the plot is then derived (Castelvetro 1570, 212r.; cf. Kappl 2006, 176). At the end of the century the unity of time and place already appeared to be a dominant stage-norm, independent from the unity of plot, and this is why Bonaventura Morone used it to justify, why he had chosen to concentrate time and place within the plot of La Giustina. Tragedia spirituale (1634/1612) completely to Antioch against the historical facts of the martyr story of Giustina and Cipriano: because of the "luogo stretto [del] palco"

io sono forzato cominciare, e finire in Antioch tutto il processo; e fingo esser occorsa in un medesimo giorno la conversione, e la morte di Cipriano: Perche né in un medesimo Theatro si potevano fingere due cittadi, né in una stessa tragedia rappresentare cose, che avennero in tempo diverso, fra lo spatio d'alcuni anni (Morone 1634/1612, A' suoi carissimi Tarentini, s. p.)

In other respects, too, Castevetro's emphasis on what could and consequently could not be portrayed in accordance with stage practice was as important as problematical for the sacred authors. It was not for the reasons of social bienséance, later on important in the French seventeenth century, but for those of verosimile in the sense of illusion-promoting feasibility on the stage that he rejects the representation of explosive cruelties, torture and executions – and also the Crucifixion:

Perciò che l'esperienza ha mostrato che simili crudeltà, & horribilità non si possono verisimilmente far vedere in atto, & che fanno anzi ridere che piangere & che producono non effetto di tragedia ma di commedia, & se alcuno dubitasse ritruovisi alla rappresentazione della passione di nostro signore dove cio s'usa e spetialmente a Roma & contenga le risa se può. (Castelvetro 1570, 161r.).

One background to this exclusion of stage deaths discussed in the classicist theatre poetics of the Cinquecento (see Carta 2018) is not so much Aristotle's Poetics, which considers the representation of death on stage to be conducive to pathos. But this only holds true when the portrayal of death and cruelty takes place amongst close relatives and when it does not interfere with the likelihood of the representation itself (Poetics 1452b 11–13; 1453b 7; see Sri Pathamantha 1965, 2–4). More explicit is Horace's Ars poetica vv.185–188, which cannot argue in favour of Medea's slaughter of her own children "coram populo" because it cannot be plausibly shown on stage ("quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi", Horace [1972], 16).

Bonaventura Morone (1634/1612 A' suoi carissimi Tarentini, s.p.) nevertheless considers this commandment to not let the protagonists strive "a vista de' Spettatori" to be one of the "regole d'Aristotile". He does so without Horace's and Castelvetro's theatrical-practical justification, although he seems to take up literally Horace's "coram populo". This shows once again that at the end of the century all that remained of the poetological discussions of the Cinquecento were, for many (clerical) theatre practitioners, a handful of diverse normative 'prescriptions', all of them attributed to Aristotle, such as unity of space and time, as well as the prohibition of death on stage. This certainly would modify Lohse's thesis that the communis oppinio of a rigid norm-oriented 'Aristotelian' poetics owes itself solely to an anachronistic backward projection of the rigid normative system of French seventeenth-century classicism (Lohse 2015, 13–59).

In discussing Porta's Innocenti, the Benedictine Grillo, who is more deeply involved in the poetological discussion, follows Castelvetro's argumentation rather than a normative pseudo-Aristotelian verdict that needs no justification: the death of the children cannot be realistically portrayed "senza gran copia di sangue": "dilacerati non veramente, sariano cagione, che non si potrebbe offerire spettacolo a' riguardanti, conforme alla verità dell'historia." Therefore, cruel acts could only be reported "da messi, & da' noncij di gentil favella" (Grillo 1616, 512).

But even if there were a realistic possibility of representing death, torture and physical cruelty, Grillo sees the spiritual drama confronted with the expectation that "né le morti, nè gli stratii deono rappresentati in publico per non funestar gli occhi del theatro con gli horridi, & sanguinolenti spettacoli", since otherwise the arousal of effect would get out of hand and the "affetto della compassione" would be incited "oltre misura". According to the "precetti di Aristotile", it would be in the "intento del poeta" to "muovere una mediocre commisertione ne gli spettatori, sì che gli animi loro non restino di soverchio perturbati". In Grillo's conception of an 'Aristotelian' norm, the problem of catharsis – which is not explicitly named – is thus derived from the representation of cruelty and its potential for emotionalisation. In a first letter, Grillo limits this to "compassione" (Grillo 1616, 512), in a second, he speaks of the arousal of "spavento" and "compassione" as the "principal fine del Tragico" (Grillo 1616, 515). Yet this "spavento/compassione" should not become excessive through the cruelty of stage fiction, but remain in the realm of the 'mediocre' so that the spectators "non restino di soverchio perturbati" (Grillo 1616, 512). In this characterisation, the stoical line of discussion is recognisable insofar as that tragedy should aim at a tranquilitas animi that is not totally based on apathy, but nevertheless on a reduction ("non di soverchio [. . .] perturbati") of the "commiseratione" into the direction of the 'mediocre'. Grillo's isolation of "commiseratione" in the first letter possibly has in mind the importance of compassion as a basic human characteristic in Robortello, Maggi, Viperano or Giacomini (see Kappl 2006, 309). However, in the light of very multiform interpretations of the Aristotelian concept of catharsis and their relevance for the aesthetics of tragedy (see Hathaway 1962, 212–300; Kappl 2006, 266–311) Grillo's account focussing on a more or less stoic line of argumentation seems to be quite reductive. He seems to make a bogey of the concept of catharsis against which Christian tragedy must struggle: after all, compassion and the mercy it engenders are Christian virtues that cannot be great enough.

#### 2.1.3 Spiritual solutions

The authors af spiritual tragedies dating from the secondo Cinquecento and the early Seicento are thus well aware of the poetological obstacles of a 'classicist' framework for biblical and Christian themes. But the question, "se si possano far Tragedie al modo Christiano di huomini Santi, salvi i precetti di Aristotile" can only be answered for Grillo "à prima vista" with "si possa dir di nò" (Grillo 1616, p. 512). Rather, he and others before him work to prove that "Aristotile [. . .] non rifiuta i Santi, & Innocenti nella Tragedia" (Grillo 1616, p. 514): what Malatesta Porta and Bernardino Steffonio had achieved in practice with their Italian, as well as Latin, sacred tragedies, could also be inserted with poetological theory into an Aristotelian normative context.

This 'classicist' line seems to differ from the far more radical positions of withdrawal held by di Lega, Tucci, Possevino or Porta, all of whom emphasize the difference between ancient greek and roman tragedies and 'new' Christian tragedia sacra: Di Lega's recusatio "i Grecci legga, che ciò brama" of 1549 (di Lega, Prologo, s.p.), no less than Tucci who insists on a spiritual "nova Melpomene" – and corresponding "new laws" of a "nova Musa" that gives itself new rules ("novas nequeat sibi condere leges?", Tuccius 2011, 148). This is followed by Possevino ("At materia, qua tractandum susceperat [Vida], Ethnicas poematum & fabularum leges non admisit", Possevino 1593, 289) or Porta 1604, in which he emphasizes the novelty of his "nuova Tragedia de Santi Innocenti": "Nova dico: percioche non segue lo stile de Greci, de'Latini", but the "sagre Carte" (Porta 1604, All'illustre [. . .] Ludovico Marchiselli, p. p.).

This anticipated spiritual querelle des Anciens et des Modernes can be based on similar patterns of argumentation in the secular poetics of drama. However, these are not directed against Aristotle, but instead stake claim on him as the source of legitimacy for an adaptation of poetry to the "costumi de' tempi nostri": Giraldi Cinzio's prologo "La tragedia a chi legge" to Orbecche written in 1543, allows, on the one hand, a "nova tragedia" to emerge from "nova materia" (Giraldi Cinzio 1977, 180), but, on the other hand, believes that Aristotle's Poetics legitimizes his theatrical solutions: "Et oltre a ciò lo mi ha concesso il medesimo Aristotele. Il quale non vieta [. . .] il partirci alquanto da quell'arte, ch'egli ha ridotta sotto i precetti, che dati ci hà" (Giraldi 1583, 155; see Poetics 1453a 25). Albeit strongly condemning Giraldi Cinzio's Orbecche, Castelvetro strengthens this argument thirty years later when he historicizes the Poetics as a descriptive, not normative text: had not Aristotle in some respects "riguardo solamente a quello che era in uso a' suoi tempi e non a quello che si sarebbe potuto o si doveva fare" (Castelvetro 1570, 57v., 11r., see Stillers 1992, 155). These selective historicizations by an authority of Castelvetro's calibre were deemed more than suitable for justifying a new Christian "uso" – and Grillo seized upon this opportunity only too willingly: if

Aristotele havesse tolto à dar precetti à tempi nostri di formar Tragedie, à patto alcuno non avrebbe egli esclusi i Santi da' pubblici spettacoli: anzi gli havrebbe scelti per li più nobili Eroi [. . .]: dovendo per questo mezzo giovare all'anime de'fedeli per renderli forti al mantenimento della nostra santa fede cattolica. (Grillo 1616, 512)

The fact that the authors, despite the Christian novità of their themes, still wanted to write tragedies, which neither returned to the sacra rappresentazione nor created a completely new form, shows that they were still able to see a possibility for redemption with regard to norms usually defined as Aristotelian in nature. This redemption, however, only functions at the price of stretching these norms to the point of their partial relativisation, and engenders a paradoxical strategy that simultaneously respects and contradicts classicist normativity, which in essence constitutes the implicit anti-classicism of the late Cinquecento.

Part of this strategy, however, is that authors with a Christian-Aristotelian agenda sought to avoid explicit breaches of norms (or what they considered as such) and, to this end, chose to only use commentaries on 'Aristotelian' guidelines that suited their lines of argument from the huge range of contemporary interpretations available at that time. When di Lega, for example, wanted his tragedy of Christ to be described alternatively as a "Tragicommedia (. . .) poiche da si felice morte nacque la vera vita" (di Lega 1549 Al signor Leonardo Curzi, s.p.), or when Possevino in the Biblotheca selecta labelled the tragedy of Pseudo-Gregory of Nazianzus "Tragedia sive Tragicomedia" (Possevino 1593, 300), then this designation of a new, irregular genre was out of the question for Grillo, who wanted to save the status of a more or less classical tragedy for the biblical-Christian theme at all costs. He thus clearly followed the rejection of tragicommedia put forward by Aristotelian commentators such as Castevetro (see Castelvetro 1570, p.57v.), albeit with different motives: for Grillo tragicommedia was irregular for the very reason that it was solely justified metaphysically and theologically, and not for the logics of its action. For him, the focus on the theological foreknowledge of the happy ending of the resurrection, or of the heavenly reward of the martyrs was solely an achievement of the "intelletto", which neither could nor should minimize the shock conveyed through the senses by the suffering shown on stage: "l'oggetto del senso è per se stesso assai più efficace di quello dell'intelletto", because it is only this shock to the senses that produces the "compassione" with the crucified Christ or the slain martyrs for one's own betterment and the imitatio Christi (Grillo 1616, 517). By simultaneously actualising the knowledge of redemption and including it into the play itself, this "compassione" would be destroyed. This is precisely what the dramas about Christ and martyrs of the sixteenth century sought to avoid, for they ended in crucifixion and torture, leaving out resurrection or redemption. Di Lega's Morte di Christo ends with Christ's descent from the cross, and the final chorus only hints (as the only sign for a theological happy ending) that "Signor oime, tu morto/Sei sol per darne vita" (di Lega 1549, atto quinto, s.p.). Domenico Treccio's Christo penoso, e moriente (1611) ends with an amplification of Arnulf of Leuven's Good Friday hymn "Salve caput cruentatum" excluding the resurrection. Morone da Taranto also ended his Tragedia spirituale Il Mortorio di Christo (1611) with the death of Jesus and the liturgical choral "Sepulto Domino", the ninth and final responsory of Holy Saturday. Analogically, Grillo assigned the sacred tragedy of Porta's Santi innocenti to the "compassione" of the liturgical celebration of the Innocent Children on December, 28th, in which the purple of mourning ("veste nel natal loro di pavonazza") and the omission of the "Gloria in excelsis" shade the "allegrezza de la lor beatitudine" through the liturgical colour of sorrow (Grillo 1616, 517).

These and other authors thus underline the analogy of the exitus infelix of spiritual (as well as secular) tragedy to liturgy, and, in particular, the death of Christ on stage to the Passion of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, which often provided context for performances of crucifixion dramas (see Treccio 1611, Al molto illustre [. . .] Serrano Trissino, s.p.). In the liturgy of Good Friday, the main aim is to evoke the suffering and death of Christ on the cross, the dramatically staged accusation that Christ brings against the people of God in the so-called 'improperia', who, by being unbelievers, have caused these sufferings of the righteous. Compassion with the protomartyr Christ (as well as with the martyrs who followed him) should immediately awaken the feeling of one's own guilt, and also love for suffering ("Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi", Schott 1935, 397). In the liturgy of Good Friday, Christ and the cross are symbolically buried, and therefore no fully valid masses – i.e. ones in which consecration takes place – are celebrated on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, instead only previously consecrated hosts are distributed.

Detached from the liturgy of the Passion, the same separation of the contemplation of Christ's suffering and death from the resurrection can also be found in books containing meditations, sermons and poetry on the Passion that flooded the Italian book market from the mid-sixteenth century onwards – for example, Vincenzo Bruno's S.J. Meditationi sopra i misteri della passione et resurretione di Christo Nostro Signore (Venice 1586), Francesco Panicarola's Cento Ragionamenti sopra la passione (1587), Angelo Grillo's Christo flagellato (1607) or Guido Casoni's La Passione di Christo (1626) (see Föcking 2018b), in which no knowledge of redemption should lessen the shock of Christ's passion and one's own sins. This meditations on the passion of Christ also form a reference for the tragedia sacra: Morone da Taranto, for example, explicitly understands his Mortorio di Christo as one of the "cento, e mille modi" in which "la morte del nostro benedetto Christo può meditarsi" (Morona da Taranto 1620/1611, Alli suoi rev. Padri e Fratelli, s.p.; see on spiritual theatre and meditation Schmidt 2018).

The conception of a tragedia a lieto fine developed by Giraldi Cinzio in the mid-sixteenth century, which incorporates the reward of a God who is tormented and close to perishing into the play and thus destroys the exitus infelix as a minimally tragic element (cf. Herrick 1955; Lohse 2015, 195–200), therefore does not serve the theory and practice of tragedia sacra. On the contrary, supported by the Good Friday liturgy of mourning, meditations about passion, as well as the secular tragedy poetics of the exitus infelix, act as a defense against the contemporary view that the death of Christ and of the martyrs is conceivable as a tragicommedia. However, it also acts as a line of argument against the views held by Lessing, George Steiner or Charles Mazouer that a Christian tragedy is a contradiction in terms (see above, chap. 2.1.2.1.), as well as Torquato Tasso's assignment of Christian themes to the epic, and not to tragedy. Thus, the tragedia sacra would have to be considerably more conservative than Giraldi Cinzo, but less conservative than Tasso. Sacred tragedy is even less prone to follow the purely secular tragicommedia route favoured by Giovan Battista Guarini in 1585, which shifted the educational effect of the greek, roman and contemporary tragedy entirely to ecclesiastical proclamation through the "parola Evangelica", thereby declaring both the 'old' tragedy and the 'new', spiritual tragedy (like every form of spiritual poetry) obsolete: "che bisogno habbiamo noi hoggi di purgar il terrore, & la commiseratione con le Tragiche viste, havendo i precetti santissimi della nostra relligione ?" (Guarini 1585, 29r.–v.).

Although the tragedia spirituale is committed to biblical and Christian themes, liturgy, piety and theology, in its self-perception it remains a tragedy, one whose normative horizon must be adapted to the "novas leges" (Tuccius 2011, 148). At its centre lies the problem of catharsis, from which both the construction of the 'middle' tragedy's protagonists and the recipient's affective response are configured. The multiform interpretation of phobos and eleos in the Cinquecento (see Hathaway 1962, 203–300, Kappl 2006, 266–311, Chevrolet 2008, Lohse 2015, 173–182) thus took on decisive importance for the genre of spiritual tragedy, and the Benedictine Grillo viewed himself as an authority able to adapt the concept to Christian needs through the historicization of tragedy norms already set out theoretically by Giraldi Cinzio and Castelvetro:

se Aristotele havesse tolto à dar precetti à tempi nostri di formar Tragedie, à patto alcuno non avrebbe egli esclusi i Santi da' pubblici spettacoli: anzi gli havrebbe scelti per li più nobili Eroi [. . .]: dovendo per questo mezzo giovare all'anime de'fedeli per renderli forti al mantenimento della nostra santa fede cattolica (Grillo 1616, 512)

The "renederli forte al mantenimento della nostra fede cattolica" indicates that no purification of excessive emotion is required of tragedy. Malatesta Porta even explicitly rejects the concept of catharsis in the sense of a purification or moderation of emotion: the new Christian tragedy "né studia di purgare, o togliere le passioni" (Porta 1604, Al'Ilustrissimo Signore [. . .] Lodovico Marchiselli, s.p.). On the contrary, it drives out the specifically Christian ennobled "gagliardissimi affetti; & massime della compassione" (Grillo 1616, 513) through the suffering of exemplary Christian figures in order to inspire faith and love for Christ and counteract the "disordine de gli affetti" and the "l'abuso de' costumi" (Grillo 1616, 530). Not the moderation of emotion is the goal, but the maximum increase of "compassione", remorse and the ability of imitatio Christi (see Nendza 2020, 180). All this is highlighted by Morone da Taranto when he assigns to his "lagrimevol tragedia" the meditative and affective goals of "meraviglia, ò di ringratiamento, ò d'imitatione, ò di compuntione, ò di compassione" (Morona da Taranto 1620/1611, Alli suoi rev. Padri e Fratelli, s.p.).

This moralisation of the concept of catharis is not a speciality of the sacred drama, but is of importance for its interpretation throughout the Cinquecento (see Schings 1980, 33; Lohse 2015, 176–182), which, alongside a more stoic interpretation of Robortello, Vettori, or Minturno (see Kappl 2006, 270–286) combined the Aristotelian economy of emotion with a more Horatian and humanist understanding of prodesse and utile: emotions such as "orrore" or "compassione" are not awakened by Giraldi Cinzio's stage action in order to temper them in real life, but they are used as instruments to make the audience "bramosi di apparare, col mezzo dell'orrore e della compassione, quello che non sanno, cioè di fuggire il vizio e di seguire la virtù" (Giraldi Cinzio 1973, 224). Using "compassione" and "paura" to combat other – negative – emotions and thus guiding the spectator along a virtuous path is also the one set out by of Maggi/Lombardi and Jason Denores, for whom poetry is "una arte di purgar gli animi de que' piu importanti affetti, che travagliano la nostra humanità, & introdur in loro virtù con accorto, utile, honorato tratenimento" (Denores 1588, 2r.–v. epistola dedicatoria, see Kappl 2006, 273, 293–295). Obviously, this line of argumentation is more compatible with Christian morals than the stoic alternative of catharsis as outlined by Robortello or Minturno (see Regn 1987b, 126f.).

If the tragedia sacra relies on the full force of the compassion with the suffering of the protagonists, it can also bid farewell to their traditional mediocritas "inter bonum et malum" (Robortello 1548/1968, 130). As the spiritual authors have identified a main objection to a Christian tragedy here, they apply various strategies to eliminate this hurdle. On the one hand, saintly protagonists are justified as they create the maximum amount of compassion and their suffering the maximum of amount of terrore, however, on the other hand, they can thus become exemplary figures of imitatio Christi so as to enhance the (Christian) virtuosity of the spectators. Sebastiano Minturno took a completely different approach when attempting to justify such protagonists in De Poeta to the one in his Poetica Toscana: here he stated, in the Aristotelian fashion throughout (Poetics 1452b, 35–38) that it is "non [. . .] ragionevole, che i buoni, o pur'i rei in qualche aversità caduti si rappresentino in Teatro", because the fall of those "essendo di ottimi costumi, e di somma verità ornati [. . .] più sdegno apporti, che spavento" (Minturno 1725, p. 78). His definition of this "sdegno" is very similar in nature to Castelvetro's (1570, 154v.) as the spectators' revulsion against a world order that plunges the good into misfortune without reason or guilt. Those, however, who "quella infelicità meritino", that is, the one who is thoroughly evil, are not to be pitied. In De Poeta, however, he changes his argument: here, the tragedy does not lie in the misguided wrongdoing of the protagonists, which starts the action, i.e. the "fortunae mutatione" and the tragically late arrival of the anagnoris (Minturno 1559/ 1970, p. 179), but solely in the effect suffering has on the spectator. In this respect, Christ's death is, according to Minturno, thoroughly suitable for tragedy, since Christ's passion was cruel and inhuman ("crudeliter lacerates", "horrendum"), pitiful ("miserabilis"), terrifying – Minturno refers to the eclipse of the sun from Mt 27:45 – and miraculous ("admiranda sunt mortem devictam esse", Minturno 1559/1970, 183, 184). Morone da Taranto, without naming Minturno, transposes exactly all this in the Mortorio di Christo: "Il fine nostro è movere i santi affetti degli spettarori col vedere Christo crocefisso e che gli si trafigga il petto che si schiodi" (Morone 1620/1611, 160). Since the death of Christ and the martyrs is an expression of the divine plan of salvation, one which is known to every believer, the fall of these "buoni" into (material, physical) ruin cannot arouse any "sdegno" of the spectators against the opacity of an inexplicable fate.

Like Minturno, Castelvetro stated in 1570 that a supposed absence of hamartia need not be in itself an obstacle to a 'real' protagonist of a tragedy, if only his suffering and death have the right effect on the spectator. On the one hand, he refers to the fact that, according to Aristotle, the fall of the "persona santissima (. . .) da felicità a miseria è stimata cosa ingiusta" and bears the danger of "di mormorare contra Dio, & di dolersi di lui" (Castelvetro 1570, 157r.). Yet on the other hand, he also has a genuinely Christian effect-centred and imitatio-related argumentation at hand that justifies the "persona Santissima" as a tragic character. He explains that the example of strong protagonists in a tradgedy could better immunise the spectator against "spavento & misericordia" than weak ones could:

Il che s'è veduto in coloro, a quali fu rivelata per benignita divina la luce dell'evangelio concio sia cosa in quelle contrade dove si videro alcuni con gagliardo & sicuro animo sostenere il martirio molti s'incorarono altresi par essempio suo a sostenerlo con fermezza d'animo (Castelvetro 1570, 65v.).

Thus, martyrs suddenly become ideal tragedy heroes, although the inter bonum et malum seems to be eliminated in view of their enlightenment by "la luce dell'evangelio". They suffer not because of their own misjudgement, but because of testifying "benignita divina". Castelvetro is thus anything but an exclusive defender of a norm that excludes "ogni possibilità di trasformare in eroe tragico qualsiasi martire cristiano, e ancor più Cristo" (Fanelli 2009, 365), but rather – like Minturno – opens the way to the martyr drama (see Schings 1980, 33; Kappl 2006, 240), which is presented in accordance with an 'Aristotelian' theoretical framework.

Also, Grillo solves the hamartia problem relating to biblical Christian protagonists (with the exception of Christ, who is free of any fault) in an 'Aristotelian', but slightly different manner: before him, Castelvetro had already suspected that in depicting the fall of an immaculate figure to ruin, the public's revulsion against a world order unjustly established by the gods would be suspended: the common people would believe every misfortune to be the protagonist's own fault (Castelvetro 1570, 154v.). In this dilution of hamartia into a general human defectiveness and its divine punishment, still attributed to the "popolo, il quale crede tutte le cose avenire per dispositione giusta di dio" (Castelvetro 1570, 154v.), Castelvetro was able to draw on leanings such as those employed by Cardinal Minturno, who transforms the individual fault arising from a protagonist's character and provoking his or her fearful and pitiful fall (Poetics 1453a8–10) into an "errore quodam humano" (Minturno 1559, 180). He thus achieves a "neutralisation of tragic hamartia" (Kappl 2006, 248).

Following this, Grillo then took the logical step of relating this error humanus, independant of any specific occasion, with the results of human original sin and was thus able to declare every human being, including the "Santi, tanto venerati", to be a protagonist suitable for tragedy:

Inteso che molti valent'huomini, cioè, che molti martiri, & molti gran Santi, che potrian esser convenevol soggetto di tragedia, in questa carne non solamente furono peccatori, ma gran peccatori; come si prova in San Pietro, che negò [. . .]. Lasciando che la legge di Christo non ammette alcuna perfettione nel suo giusto che non sia assai mezzana al debito della legge, al merito della gratia, & al premio della gloria. (Grillo 1616, 517)

Grillo's approximation of Christian sinfulness to Castelvetro's "persona simile a noi, & della mezzana" as the best subject to arouse "spavento, & compassione" (Castelvetro 1570, 158v.), is altered into the formulation "assai mezzana al debito della legge" or the "mezzana conditione, rispetto al debito, di cui siam tenuti al superno legislatore" (Grillo 1616, 530). Thus, too, apostles such as Saint Peter, Saint Paul or the good thief crucified alongside Christ are affected by the concept of original sin, something that results in Peter's misdeeds (triple denial), Saul's persecution of Christians or the criminal life of the good thief. Those sinners are eligible as protagonists for Christian tragedies:

E per questa porta legittima, & reale possono entrare i nostri giusti, & i nostri innocenti nell'Aristotelico theatro, & farsi convenevol soggetto della sua Tragedia, con tutti que' movimenti, & incitamenti, che possono regolare il disordine de gli affetti, & riformare l'abuso de' costumi (Grillo 1616, p. 530)

Thus, Grillo can draw on a model – one well-used in older ascetic literature – of knowledge on the predisposition of man, redeemed from original sin thanks to Christ, but still susceptible to it nevertheless. Accordingly, Thomas à Kempis wrote in his immensely successful book De imitatione Christi, attributed to John Gerson in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:

Niuno è tanto perfetto e santo, che non habbia alcuna volta tentatione; che non possiamo a pieno esser senza essa. Nientedimeno le tentazioni sono spesse volte utili all'huomo; avvenga, che siano gravi e moleste: imperoche in quelle l'huomo si purga e dalla colpa; & etiando è ammaestrato & humiliato. (Gerson 1571, 15)

If in this way the concept of hamartia has passed into the Christian human condition of the original sinful errore, phobos and eleos are, even more than for Minturno, no longer tied to an individual and character-related failure, nor to the effect of a moderation of emotion. In the tragedia sacra, the arousal of pity and horror is uncoupled from any individual guilt of the protagonist and is now aroused by his or her suffering and death: martyrs are tortured and killed for their own redemption and, exemplarily, for that of all people. Since their sacrifice becomes more impressive the more they suffer, the cruelties inflicted on them can also be heightened to the maximum and represented on stage. The Horatian conviction that the combination of visual and acoustic perception produces stronger agitation than the acoustic one alone (Ars poetica vv. 180–182), had already been adopted by Giraldi Cinzio to intensify the impact of his tragedies of horror (Giraldi Cinzio 1973, 185–186), and found its religious counterpart in the mainly Ignatian concept of meditation by means of all the senses, in which the meditator's imaginatio itself becomes a multisensory piece of theatre (Erdei 1990; Enenkel/Melion 2011). The contemporary meditations of Christ's passion especially thus profile a detailed 'inner' observation of the martyred and crucified body of Christ, as is the case in Vincenzo Bruno's Meditationi sopra i misteri della passione et resurretione di Christo Nostro Signore (1586), which, however, requires reading the written word:

Vedi come quei crudeli carnefici mettono le mani adosso al Salvatore, & con grande fretta, & inhumanità lo spogliano ignudo; [. . .] et perche la veste era in tutte le parti del corpo attaccata alle piaghe, nello spogliarlo [. . .] si staccò insiemo con la veste con tanta violenza la pelle dal corpo; [. . .] anche rimarendo quasi scorticato, e fatto tutta una piaga. (Bruno 1586, 320–321, cf. Föcking 2018b, 227–231)

The even greater affective power of the visual is repeatedly raised as a subject in the spiritual theatre of the secondo Cinquecento, with reference to meditation, but the latter is simultaneously surpassed and – in comparison to meditation – undercut by the medial possibilities and restrictions of the visual: the visualization of the spiritual spectacle willingly cuts itself off from its intellectual transcendence and from the happy ending of salvation (see Föcking 2018b), and relies solely on the affective, sensual shock, leaving the audience alone with its utmost inflamed emotions. Paolo Bozzi, for example, wrote in the preface to his Giudicio universale in 1596: "Le cose, che si veggiono (. . .) molto più l'animo commuovono, che quelle, che si leggono, & ascoltano" (Bozzi 1596, Dedica All'Illustrissimo, & Reverendiss[imo] Monsignor Cornaro Vescovo di Padova, s. p.).

More than a messenger's report of the torments of Christ or the martyrs, their showing thus arouses the emotions, the pity and the remorse of the spectators. Here, spiritual tragedies can be more radical than Grillo who praises Porta's I santi innocenti, that only what is appropriate for the "bellezza della favola" has been put on stage, "il resto passarlo con racconti, & moderarlo con l'aiuto di bene applicati episodi" (Grillo 1616, 513). In contrast to his contemporary Grillo, Bonaventura Morone sees his more radical beliefs justified when he makes the protagonists of La Giustina suffer and die on stage, "perche farei da sciocco se nascondessi dietro il palcoscenico l'attione principale: e gli spettatori, che vengono a vedere la rappresentazione del martirio, non vedessero morire i Martiri" (Morone da Taranto 1634/1612, A' suoi carissimi Tarentini, s. p.). In the preface to Irena (1619), he even goes one step further: in antiquity, Medea's death was not allowed to be shown on stage. Implicitly, Morone refers to Horace's Ars Poetica v.185 and states:

ma nei tempi nostri non dobbiamo obbligarci a questa osservanza; perche l'attione principale [. . .] non deve raccontarsi solo, ma vedersi [. . .]. Restarebbono mal soddisfatti i popoli, che convengono a quelle Tragedie spirituali, se non vedessero nel fine il martirio di colui, o colei, c'ha dato il nome a l'opera (Morone da Taranto 1619, Alla nobilissima e fedelissima città di Lecce, s.p.)

Accordingly, the steadfast Irena is stabbed to death by the tyrant Saborio on stage. Her disembowelment ("ch'io le torro di mezzo l'petto il core/per abbruciarlo in olocausto", Morone da Taranto 1619, 139v.) is prevented in the nick of time, and, finally, Saborio himself is killed and taken away to the "averno" before the eyes of the audience by Giove and Mercurio, who have been banished to hell.

Representations of death on stage are also found, as early on as in the middle of the Cinquecento, in Giraldi Cinzio, whose Orbecche, however, was sharply criticised by more orthodox partisans of the Poetics (see Weinberg 1961, 952). In his tragedy of horror, Giraldi Cinzio, in addition to adapting to the "costumi de' tempi nostri" (Giraldi 1977, 180), had reported the gruesome deaths of Orontes and the children by a messenger, highly in love with details, but then showed Orbecche's suicide on stage as well as Orontes' severed head and hands, and the bodies of the children pierced by swords. And his entry in his Discorso intorno a comporre delle comedie e delle tragedie (1554) detailing that one should not show the death of the "rei" on stage, so as not to arouse any pity for the wrong characters (Giraldi 1554, 222; see Lohse 2015, 200), means, by implication, that the death of the good evokes precisely this pity. It is certainly no coincidence that Giraldi Cinzio seems to be a model author during the early period of the tragedia sacra, for instance for di Lega, who, however, for his part, shies away from any staging of the crucifixion, presenting it only in a messenger's report (see Föcking 2020, 289–292).

The maximum arousal of compassion and its proximity to the meditative contemplation of the passion and suffering of Christ and his martyrs, ultimately also explains the low relevance that the problem of historicity has for the poetological discussions of the tragedie sacre. In 1549, di Lega was the first to address the alternative of "se d'Historia/ o di fabula" (di Lega 1549, prologo, s.p.) for the sacred tragedy, but then he declared without circumstance the "atti fatti, & tutte le parole dette dal Signor nostro Christo Giesù" (di Lega 1549, Al signor Leonardo Curzi, s.p.) as suitable for tragedy. The fact that the tragedia sacra can take the sacred history as its sole source, and that it can remain completely unimpressed by arguments recommending the use of "favole finte", finds both spiritual and poetological justification.

The subjects of the meditation are fundamentally and exclusively based on the Passion of Christ and other incidents from the New Testament, the Old Testament and the Martyriologies. There can be no 'faked' martyrs or saints at all for meditation and ascetic or spiritual literature. In this respect, the latter is fundamentally set apart from the licences of the imagination of Aristotelian mimesis. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the historicity of the historia sacra was guaranteed and controlled by ecclesiastical authority and purified from the purely legendary: this concerned the revision of the calendar of saints in the Missale Romanum in 1570, as well as the standardisation of canonisation processes by the Congregation for Sacred Rites and Ceremonies established in 1588 (Burke 1987) and the historical, source-based new historiography of saints and the Church such as, for example, Cesare Baronio (Martyriologicum romanum, 1586; Annales ecclesiastici a Christo nato ad annum 1198, 1588–1607). The historicity of the New Testament is the ineluctable authority for di Lega ("tutti gli atti fatti, & tutte le parole dette dal Signore", di Lega 1549, Al Signor Leonardo Curzi Pathenio, s. p.), as well as for Malatesta Porta 1604 ("Con nova foggia rappresenta miserabile, e terribile auuenimento di sagra istoria", Porta 1604, All'illustrissimo [. . .] Ludovico Marchesini [s.p.]). Morone da Taranto's sources for Giustina are the hagiographies of Simeon Metafraste (Menologion, c. 1000 A.D.) and of the Carthusian Laurentius Surius, De probatis Sanctorum historiis (1550–1575) (Morone da Taranto 1634/1612, Ai suoi carissimi Tarentini, s.p.).

The strong authority of the New and Old Testaments, in addition to the traditional as well as the contemporary hagiographies of the sixteenth century, as the only possible sources for spiritual tragedies was integrated into the secular side of the poetological discussion and into the rhetorical and humanist position shared by Bernardino Daniello, Girolamo Muzio, J. C. Scaliger, T. Tasso (Lohse 2010, 215–218), that history should be the only basis for tragedy. But even Castelvetro's more flexible and more Aristotelian point of view, which demanded "verosimiglianza" rather than historical truth at any cost, could also meet the needs of authors of spiritual tragedy: if tragedy "dee contenere attione humana, ma magnifica ancora, & reale", then, Castelvetro argued, it would be unlikely if a stage king were not also known from history ("non ci possiamo imaginare un re che non sia stato", Castelvetro 1570, 104v.). Since Castelvetro also allowed martyrs to serve as protagonists, this also applies to them: there is no martyr of whom the sacra historia would not also have had knowledge. None can simply be invented, and an invented martyr would lack credibility as well as authority.

### 2.1.4 Conclusions

The debate of the authors of tragedie spirituali about poetological issues of tragedy in the second half of the sixteenth century demonstrates that they were not satisfied with a classicist exclusion of a Christian "illustre" from tragedy as set out for instance in Tasso's Discorsi (Tasso 1977, 13f.). They also did not agree with Battista Guarini's disentanglement of religious content and poetic genres, even if he based his argument on the undisputed primacy of "nostra relligione" for moral betterment and the arousal of "terrore, & commiseratione" (Guarini 1588, 29v.). The result reached by Guarini's outlines the obsolete nature of tragedy in general, as well as the possibility of poetry relieved of moral claims, especially in the genre of the tragicomedia. Forty years after its publication, Guarini's views were still supported by some: G. Zinano, author of the poema eroico L'Eracleide, argues in a similar line against sacred (epic) poetry:

Finalmente i Santi [. . .] sono soggetti d'hinni, di prediche, d'orationi, di sacre lezzioni e l'epica poesia si dee reputare indegna di trattar di loro. Ci insegnano bene le sacre Historie loro à condurci alla felicità con l'essempio loro, ma con modo più eccelso che l'epica poesia. [. . .] Se l'epico poeta cantasse di Santi, oltre che s'usurparebbe l'ufficio proprio de' sacri maestri abandonarebbe altresì il proprio modo d'insegnare. (Zinano 1623, s.p.[4r.])

These positions of a classicist radicalism are registered as a danger to a tragedia spirituale. The reaction to this danger, however, is not to design a completely different, pronouncedly unclassical or anti-classical form of tragedy, or even to continue creating poetry in medieval genres such as the sacra rappresentazione. Rather, the authors use the vagueries, contradictions, and gaps within an 'Aristotelian' frame of reference as an opportunity to produce a spiritual tragedy both compatible with the "precetti di Aristotile" and in contradiction to the supposed 'Aristotelian' impossibility of its very existence. The justification behind the legitimacy of tragedia spirituale often has something of a poetological trick about it, such as the one performed by Malatesta Porta and Angelo Grillo:

Con nova foggia rappresenta miserabile, e terribile auuenimento di sagra istoria, toglie persone principali che paiono da ogni teatro Tragico lontanissime; ed in sostanza, che potrà forse venire nel primo incontro tutta creduta diuersa dà i poetici migliori insegnamenti, epur non è così. (Porta 1604, All'illustrissimo (. . .) Ludovico Marchesini [s.p.])

Grillo confirmed, that Porta could not have chosen a "soggetto più contrario di brocca all'apparente sentimento di Aristotele" than children innocent in the biblical sense (Mt 2:16–18), but then showed himself "nelle maggiori difficoltà maggior maestro", i.e. he mastered the contrainte of the Aristotelian requirements against all appearances (Grillo 1616, 513).

Unlike Giambattista Marino's post-classical credo of writing his books "contro le regole" (Marino 1967, 227), the question here is not one relating to open innovation (and certainly not to disruption). It is also less about a "conversion" of a secular-classicist model from a position of ideological strength (cf. Cox 2020, 16), but rather one relating to a paradoxical confession of the superiority of the "precetti di quel valente filosofo" Aristotle (Bozzi 1596, s.p. [dedica]), producing tragedies that, like conundrums, only reveal their classicist background at second glance and with the backing of considerable argumentative efforts. These efforts seem to be a necessity for the authors, for, on the one hand, they most certainly took note of the pressure created by the poetological orthodoxy of the "precetti", of the "regole" and the 'prohibitions' ("Aristoteles vetat", Tuccius 2011, 272), on the other hand, they claimed that what they were offering was an apparent adaptation of classicist poetological positions to biblical and christian plots. The most important of these adaptations, and one that is repeatedly referred to as being particularly problematic for the Christian tragedy genre, is the middle hero who, in texts by Minturno or Castelvetro, can completely lose his or her mediocritas and, as Christ or an exemplary martyr, become the completely flawless protagonist of tragedy. The fact that authors such as Angelo Grillo recoiled from this apparently too overt 'un-Aristotelian' solution and wanted to see a remnant of hamartia now identified with sinfulness as a consequence of original sin in even the most virtuous of martyrs, shows the 'classicist' pressure which the genre still had to face as late as 1600. But it also shows the creativity with which its authors offered apparently compatible solutions that hollowed out Aristotelian concepts beyond recognition. When Grillo wrote that an operation of this kind "non fa Aristotele Christiano, lo dimostra però in questo articolo di poetica si catholico [. . .] che non rifiuta i Santi, & Innocenti nella Tragedia" (Grillo 1616, 514), he characterized exactly what can be called 'implicit anti-classicism': the will to operate within the classicist framework of the "precetti di Aristotele" (Grillo 1616, 512) and the necessity to adapt biblical plots and Christian protagonists generate solutions that were harmful to classicism itself.

### 2.2 Paradoxical anti-classicism: On contrafactures of Petrarch's Canzoniere in the Cinquecento (Daniel Fliege)

When the Franciscan friar Girolamo Malipiero published his Petrarca spirituale in 1536, a collection of contrafactures of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta that attempted a spiritual correction of Petrarch's poems and Petrarchism in general, it spurred many other poets to follow his example. Giovanni Giacomo Salvatorino, for example, wrote in the preface to his Thesoro de Sacra Scrittura, published soon after Malpiero's work, that he had only begun his own project following the publication of the Petrarca spirituale. The year 1554 also saw the publication of I Sonetti, le canzoni ed i trionfi di M. Laura, attributed to a certain Stefano Colonna, in which Petrarch's lover Laura responds to the Canzoniere's poems. And in the Sonetti di messer Francesco Petrarca trasportati in sacro by Lucia Colao, which have only survived in manuscript and were written towards the end of the Cinquecento, we similarly find a female lyrical subject. These four texts offer moral-spiritual corrections of Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta in that the authors employ contrafactures to correct (almost) every single poem of Petrarch's original in a moral-religious sense, though they start out from respectively different perspectives: Malipiero writes from the point of view of a deceased Petrarch now existing as a spirit who cannot leave the earthly world; Colonna writes from Laura's point of view and tries to correct Petrarch's one-sided perspective; Salvatorino takes the point of view of an undefined speaker; and Colao switches genders by making the first person speaker an alter ego of herself as a female poet.

### 2.2.1 The literary-historical context

The first examples of genuinely spiritual sonnet cycles can be observed at the same historical moment as these contrafactures. Vittoria Colonna's Rime were first printed in Parma in 1538, even if this edition contains only a small number of religious poems (see Fliege 2021a, 234–243), and around 1540, Colonna gave Michelangelo a manuscript with 103 sonnets of her Rime spirituali (published with an English translation in Colonna 2005 and an ample commentary in Colonna 2020). Soon thereafter, in 1542, Rinaldo Corso commented on Colonna's spiritual sonnets (see Bianco 1998, Cinquini 1999 and Faggioli 2014), and in 1546, ten years after the Petrarca spirituale, Colonna's Rime spirituali – comprising 180 sonnets – were published in Venice by Vincenzo Valgrisi (on the print tradition of Colonna's Rime, see Crivelli 2016a and 2016b as well as Fliege 2021a). It can be assumed, however, that Colonna had already begun writing spiritual sonnets in the 1530s (see Fliege 2021a). Along with Colonna, Veronica Gambara wrote spiritual sonnets early on, but they never appeared as print edition in the Cinquecento (Gambara 1995; see Bettoni 2002 and Fliege 2021b). Luca Contile's Rime christiane were completed as early as 1546, but not printed until 1560 (see Quondam 1974). In the secondo Cinquecento, numerous poets followed this model. In 1564, Laura Battiferra published her Sonetti spirituali, and in 1570 Gabriele Fiamma followed with his Rime spirituali, in the preface of which he names Vittoria Colonna as the model for his own spiritual sonnets (see Ossola 1976b, Föcking 1993, 1994, 69–102).

That this reorientation of Petrarchism had already begun in the 1530s may seem surprising at first glance, since Petrarchism was still a relatively recent phenomenon – at least according to Bembo's conception, who declared Petrarch to be the sole author taken as a model for the genre of verse poetry, as opposed to prose, which looked to Boccaccio. Yet Petrarch, of course, had already been the subject of poetic imitation before Bembo. Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua, first published in Venice by Giovan Tacuino in 1525, and the Petrarca spirituale are separated by only a decade (for a critical edition of the princeps, see Bembo 2001); Bembo's Rime were printed only six years before Malipiero's work, in 1530 (Bembo 2008). The Petrarca spirituale and the other contrafactures of Petrarch are to be read in this context of a close imitation of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta that was just being constituted along the lines of Bembo. The Canzoniere already held a special status at this time, i.e., in the 1530s, as Amedeo Quondam notes: the Canzoniere "[n]on è un testo qualsiasi: è in quegli anni diventato il Testo per eccellenza, nelle pratiche della comunicazione letteraria" (Quondam 1991c, 208). In his Pistole volgari, printed in 1539, Nicolò Franco laments not without irony the pressure exerted by Bembism:

Il quale [scilicet Pietro Bembo] come ottimo e massimo duce di tutti gli altri, si sta dando ordeni e leggi con lo scettro de la scienza, minacciando prigion d'infamia e morte di nome a chi non osserva i giusti decreti de la sua penna. (Franco 1542, 195r.)

Before examining the correction of the Canzoniere, it is thus necessary to first look at the classicism established by Bembo, or what Quondam called the "trionfante classicismo bembiano" (1991c, 210).

The Prose raised Petrarch to an author of a classicism worthy of imitation for verse poetry, and whose object was first and foremost Petrarch's linguistic expression. For Bembo, Petrarch's volgare was to become the model of language to be followed in poetry and, as we will show in the following, the authors of spiritual contrafactures had no objections to this assertion. The language of the new poetry that Bembo called for was to be characterised by "armonia e leggiadria" (Bembo, Prose II, 2) and a "dolce suono" (see Marx 1998, 11), in opposition to the principle of using ordinary language, the "occulta forza della lunga usanza nel parlare del popolo" (Bembo, Prose I, 18; see Marx 1998, 11). Moreover, Bembo departed from a morally entrenched aesthetics in favour of a poetry that is entirely focused on the musical and self-reflexive quality of expression (Marx 1998, 12–13). Although Simona Oberto similarly emphasises Bembo's importance for the formation of Petrarchism in the Cinquecento, she nevertheless questions the term "orthodoxy" as used by scholars to characterise Bembo's Petrarchism, arguing that this term "fails to capture the innovative specificity of Bembo's practice of imitation and poetry" (Oberto 2016, 150; we have ourselves translated all quotations from foreign languages other than Italian into English). In other words, to follow Oberto, we can say that the term overlooks the specific features that Bembo introduced into his own Rime, reducing it to the closest possible imitation of the original Petrarchan text. Or, as Noyer-Weidner (1974, 353) noted some time ago, Bembo "wanted to show that 'more can be made' of the possibilities provided by Petrarch than Petrarch made of them".

An important difference between Bembo and Petrarch is the conception of the poet's glory. Gerhard Regn has observed that the incipit of the proemial sonnet of Bembo's Rime imitates the beginning of the Aeneid, and that Bembo strives to emulate the model of the epic, so that, in his poetic programme, "la poesia petrarchista reclama la dignità del genere elevato e promette di guadagnare per il suo poeta [. . .] una gloria che vince la morte" (Regn 2018, 6). Consequently, Regn continues, "il conflitto assiologico fra fama poetica ed etica cristiana – così caratteristico dei Rerum vulgarium fragmenta – non erompe" in Bembo's Rime (Regn 2018, 7). On the contrary, "[n]el petrarchismo di Bembo, la gloria poetica, che per Petrarca costituiva un difetto morale riconosciuto come tale ma tuttavia incorreggibile, diventa addirittura il fulcro di un'idea di letteratura che trasforma la dimensione estetico-formale in valore etico" (Regn 2018, 9).

Oberto also explains that "the increased attention to the euphonic of the verbal material is at the expense of the materia as well as the fulfilment of complements having a stylistic effect such as gravità and piacevolezza (along with suono, numero, variatione, decoro, and persuasione)" (Oberto 2016, 192). She adds, about this neglect of content in favour of euphony in Bembo's poetics:

This process takes place in the Prose [. . .] through the "splitting" of the rhetorical resverba relation [. . .]. By concentrating solely on the linguistic constitution of the work, as well as repeatedly referring to a possible change of register of the "scrittura" from poetry to prose, the cardinal lays the foundations for a language system that overarches genres because it is independent of genre, on the basis of a Petrarchist volgare illustre. (Oberto 2016, 192)

The contrafactures of the Canzoniere to be examined here continue to use this volgare illustre. In this way, they also imitate Petrarch's language in the closest possible imitatio. What justifies the contrafactures, however, is the materia, the content, of the Canzoniere, which is considered by the spiritual poets as morally and religiously offensive, but which Bembo neglects: in a sense, the spiritual contrafactures of Petrarch, and with them, spiritual Petrarchism as a whole, step into a gap left open by Bembo. On the one hand, the contrafactures recognise Petrarch as a model of a classical volgare and imitate his linguistic expression as closely as possible. But on the other hand, he cannot serve as a model because the spiritual contrafactures consider the content of his poetry to be reprehensible and in need of correction. The contrafactures now show ways to "save" Petrarch as a classical author by adapting the reprehensible content of his texts in a moral-religious way without changing his language. In this respect, the spiritual contrafactures can be considered neither classicist nor anti-classicist: rather, they show possibilities of an alternate classicism (cf. Föcking 1993, 226).

But Petrarchism is of course more than just the reference back to Petrarch and his literary nobilisation by Bembo: even earlier, independently of and after Bembo, poets imitated the Canzoniere (a good overview of different definitions of Petrarchism is given by Schneider 2007). Michel Dassonville, for example, emphasises that it is not isolated individual elements that are important for defining Petrarchism, but rather the references to a system, and that, since the mid-sixteenth century, it was not the individual components of a "Petrarchist system of signs" that were important, but rather their reference to each other and to an overarching tradition (Dassonville 1972, 178–179). The most obvious feature of Petrarchism in this sense is its reference to Petrarch's Canzoniere – and to a lesser extent to his Trionfi. Thomas Borgstedt argues that this "imitative programmatic" of Petrarchism forms a system that is made of

certain motif complexes and stylistic peculiarities, precious topoi of the description of beauty above all, the elaborate shaping of antithetical emotional states of painfully unfulfilled love and the humanistic belief in their transfer into the immortality of poetry. (Borgstedt 2004, 130)

However, as Klaus W. Hempfer has observed, "the principle of imitating model authors is as such an essential component of the entire humanist-classical aesthetics" (Hempfer 1987b, 256; see also Regn 1987c, 49). Moreover, it is not enough to consider Petrarch as a reference point for a linguistic model, as a "modello di lingua" of a toscanità, as Bembo demands in his Prose della volgar lingua. Rather, as Hempfer argues, Petrarch should be regarded as a "modello di poesia" (Hempfer 1987b, 257). Nor is it sufficient to enumerate certain rhetorical procedures, such as antitheses, anaphors, or parallelisms, since these "as such, of course, cannot be considered distinctive either for Petrarch or for Petrarchism" (Hempfer 1987b, 259). As Regn has also noted, it is not enough to present Petrarchism as a list of clichés and motifs: rather, Petrarchism is to be understood as a system, "as [a] se[t] of elements and relations between these elements" (Regn 1987c, 22). He explains:

themes, motifs, and stylistic figures that can be attributed to Petrarch's imitatio and that are so often identified in research as typically Petrarchist [. . .] [are to be regarded] in their capacity as relationally integrated elements, that is, relationally to the antinomicparadoxical concept of love of Petrarchist provenance that functions as the dominant element of the system. (Regn 1987c, 22–23)

This system is thus not a stock of symbols with codified meanings, but a system of signs that acquires a new meaning through the reciprocal correlations of its signs with each other. Nonetheless, as Regn points out, the term of a Petrarchist system serves a heuristic function making it possible to describe a specific text in relation to other texts in a given historical context (Regn 1987c, 23). And as Hempfer has also shown, sixteenth-century contemporaries implicitly or explicitly referred to such a system without, of course, using today's terminology (see Hempfer 1987b, 264).

As the first constitutive element of such a Petrarchist system, Regn names the "antinomic-paradoxical structure of affects" (Regn 1987c, 26), i.e., the relation between affetti dogliosi and affetti lieti, which the lyrical speaker feels simultaneously and which are paradoxically opposed to each other. The second element is the "external substrate of events in the Petrarchist story" (Regn 1987c, 32). This includes "the upholding of the identity of the protagonist whose experience of love the individual poems portray" (Regn 1987c, 32). In addition to the unfolding of a story, this includes a proemial sonnet in which a speaker retrospectively announces the story of the love that he has already experienced (Regn 1987c., 33 and Hempfer 1987b, 266). This story inscribes itself in a specific temporality, that has a starting point, namely, the innamoramento; expands beyond the death of the beloved; and paradoxically culminates in the proemial sonnet, which serves as a retrospective of the story that follows. It thus creates a limited narrative foundation in the form of an exemplary autobiography of the lyrical subject who, at the same time, seeks to identify himself with the author.

As we will now show, the spiritual contrafactures are not able to maintain this narrative foundation: they no longer tell a conflicted love story and lack a secular antithetical-paradoxical conception of love, since the "dogmatic orientation [of spiritual Petrarchism] wants to expose precisely the [Petrarchist] conception of love [. . .] as a pernicious cupiditas" (Föcking 1993, 225). Here, the question arises as to how the constitutive elements of Petrarchism are replaced, whether a "different story" is unfolded across the sonnet collection (for example, the Passion of Christ), and whether other antithetically shaped conflicts and antinomicparadoxical affect structures are enacted (one might think here of the struggle against the forces of corruption). Moreover, this raises the question of the status of the lyrical subject. Is it identified with the author and, if so, with which author (Petrarch, Laura, the contemporary writer of the contrafactures)?

#### 2.2.2 State of research

While numerous studies on spiritual Petrarchism (see Föcking 1994, Doglio 2005 and 2007, Fliege 2021a) have been published, scholars remain hesitant when it comes to contrafactures – Malipiero is an exception here, probably because he is the first and best-known author of such rewritings. In his influential work on Petrarchismo ed Antipetrarchismo nel Cinquecento from 1886, Arturo Graf examines the phenomenon of the "spiritualizzamento del Canzoniere" (Graf 1886, 57). He distinguishes between three types of spiritualisation. Firstly, he names the centone technique as "la forma più mite" (Graf 1886, 57), but he objects that

Qui lo spiritualizzamento non si esercita propriamente del Canzoniere, ma fuori di esso, i componimenti che ne nascono non han punto la pretesa di sostituirsi al libro onde traggono la sostanza. Di giunta in essi la parola del poeta si rimane inalterata. (Graf 1886, 57)

Secondly, he refers to "l'opera trasformatrice [che] invade il Canzoniere stesso, e ne penetra tutte le parti, finchè si giunge alla piena trasmutazione di esso" (Graf 1886, 57) without elaborating on what these trasformazioni or trasmutazioni, as he calls them, actually consist of. Thirdly, he mentions allegorical interpretations of the Canzoniere, which leave the Petrarchan text intact while reading into it a religious level of meaning "vedendo simboli dove il poeta certamente non ne aveva messi" (Graf 1886, 57). Graf also devotes several pages to Malipiero's Petrarca spirituale, to whom he concedes "il primato tra gli spiritualizzatori del Petrarca" (Graf 1886, 59). For Graf, the book is a "libro cattivo, ma curioso" (Graf 1886, 59). He also devotes a short section to Salvatorino's Thesoro, though he denigrates these rewritten rime as "sciagurate" (Graf 1886, 58). For Graf, the change of theme in some of the sonnets is simply "assai strana" (Graf 1886, 58); he does not recognise in them any literary "value" but regards the spiritualisations of the Canzoniere to be a literary-historical curiosity, which he assigns to the phenomenon of anti-Petrarchism.

Subsequent scholars have also denied that the spiritual contrafactures of Petrarch have any literary value, or simply didn't take them into account because these texts were not seen as "proper" literature. Or as Fucila concludes: "[t]here is no literary merit whatsoever in any of these writings" (1949, 267). Giulio Ferroni similarly speaks of "una curiosa riscrittura", "un'operazione molto rozza, con una dose di involontaria comicità", an "occasione di scherzo e di trastullo", that he included in his anthology "a mero titolo di curiosità documentaria" (Ferroni 1999, 29). Scarpa (1997, 7) likewise calls Stefano Colonna's contrafactures "unreadable", "monstrous and unbearable", a "pedantic enterprise". And Fechner (1966, 138), Baldacci (1973, 165–166) and Schick (1983, 287), among others, still characterise Malipiero's work as anti-Petrarchist.

However, these views can be considered outdated since Quondam's and Föcking's attempts to reassess the spiritual contrafactures. At the time of the appearance of the Petrarca spirituale, the phenomenon of the Rime spirituali was, according to Quondam, still completely unknown, so that Malipiero's text was "in grado poi di attivare imitazioni, di fare scuola" (Quondam 1991c, 204). For Quondam, then, the Petrarca spirituale was thus no "marginal" text (Quondam 1991c, 205), leading him to ask how its relatively great success on the Cinquecento book market can be explained. As an explanation, he notes first that there is "nulla di ingenuo" (Quondam 1991c, 205) in Malipiero's riscrittura and that Malipiero's intention stems neither from "una sorta di pratica giocosa" nor "un'economia parodica", but rather takes the form of a "seria e di grande importanza" (Quondam 1991c, 205). The Franciscan friar "non è, insomma, uno dei tanti volenterosi e audaci dilettanti dell'imitazione petrarchista che iniziano, proprio in questi anni, a inondare carte e stampe" (Quondam 1991c, 205). Nevertheless, Quondam continues, Malipiero's project is "estremamente semplificat[o], persino grossolan[o]" (Quondam 1991c, 206), in that Malipiero replaces Petrarch as a speaker with "un nuovo soggetto, generico e collettivo al tempo stesso" (Quondam 1991c, 206) which can be related to the community of all Christendom. In Quondam's view, however, the emphasis on spiritual themes could also be understood as "una radicalizzazione estrema di elementi interni all'economia tematica dell'originale petrarchesco (in quanto iperspiritualizzazione)" (Quondam 1991c, 206). Moreover, Quondam argues, all historical-geographical references and all allusions to Laura are completely lost in this "travestimento spirituale" (Quondam 1991c, 206). Quondam does recognise "[u]na contraddizione" (Quondam 1991c, 223) in the fact that Malipiero praises the linguistic design of the Canzoniere and imitates it as closely as possible, while also condemning and correcting its content. For Quondam, then, the Petrarca spirituale is an exemplary intervention of active censorship and a militant book in the context of debates about censorship and the Inquisition in Venice in the 1530s and 40s (Quondam 1991c, 208): he reads the Petrarca spirituale as attempting to show how harmful texts can be purified without completely abandoning poetry.

Moreover, Quondam also recognises an effect of parody that results from the fact that reading the rewritten sonnets inevitably calls to mind the original text, which many readers knew by heart: he goes so far as to claim that the Petrarca spirituale "non può esser letto di per sé, nella sequenza lineare dei propri

testi, ma soltanto per rapporto e differenza" (Quondam 1991c, 229) from the Petrarchan original. In his view, the result of this "double" reading ("una doppia partita di lettura") is a "maligno godimento e comica ricezione" (Quondam 1991c, 225), culminating even "in una fragorosa, liberatoria risata" (Quondam 1991c, 225). Yet Quondam ultimately concludes that the Petrarca spirituale failed in its attempt to save Petrarch as an example of spiritual poetry, since contemporary readers received the text as a "parodia e [. . .] curiosità giocosa" (Quondam 1991c, 225).

Following Quondam, Schick (1983) has interpreted the Petrarca spirituale as an allegoresis of the Canzoniere. Yet her hypothesis is based on a misinterpretation of the dialogue between the figures of Malipiero and the ghost of Petrarch that precedes the contrafactures in the Petrarca spirituale. In this fictional conversation, Malipiero states that he interpreted the Canzoniere allegorically (see below), but Schick fails to mention that Petrarch himself categorically rejects this reading of his work. An allegorical reading presupposes that there is a deeper and "truer" meaning hidden beneath the literal surface in a text, but this is precisely what the Petrarca spirituale denies. For if such an allegorical reading were possible, a correction of the poems would not be necessary; instead, a "correct" interpretation would suffice. Therefore, we can conclude, the Petrarca spirituale is not an allegoresis: rather, Malipiero considers the Canzoniere to be a literal expression of worldly love that he corrects by creating a new, religious literal meaning as an alternative.

Föcking considers Girolamo Malipiero and Vittoria Colonna to be the origin of the spiritual Petrarchism that emerged mainly in the secondo Cinquecento (Föcking 1993 and 1994). Yet he also relativises the classification of the Petrarca spirituale in anti-Petrarchism, inasmuch as he sees Malipiero's poetics as directed against the contents of the Canzoniere, but not against its language, making it possible to classify Malipiero as anti-Petrarchist only in reference to his content (Föcking 1993, 231). Föcking moreover situates Malipiero's project in the larger context of confessional politics, locating the Petrarca spirituale at the beginning of a long chain of works that, in a kind of anticipatory obedience, purged secular works even before the Council's decree on the Index librorum prohibitorum of 1559, a process that ranged from the replacement of dogmatically or morally objectionable words in Dante's Vita nuova or Boccaccio's Decameron, for example, to the spiritually oriented ré-écriture modelled on Malipiero's Petrarca spirituale. (Föcking 1993, 229–230).

In Malipiero's contrafactures, Föcking notes, the suffering of a lyrical subject becomes the "iter spirituale of any Christian" and the paradoxical affect structure that was constitutive of Petrarchism is erased by Malipiero in favour of a dichotomous axiological juxtaposition (Föcking 1993, 230–231). But Föcking also recognises "an involuntarily comic effect" of the Petrarca spirituale, which results from the "[t]he blatant signal value of the system references with simultaneous semantic inversion" (Föcking 1993, 231). He therefore concludes, like Quondam, that "this discrepancy was already ridiculed by contemporaries, [and] Malipiero's 'serious' anti-Petrarchism missed the target of a spiritual reshaping of the Canzoniere" (Föcking 1993, 231). At the same time, however, he emphasises that

the centuries-old mockery [. . .] had obscured the view of a far-reaching innovation by Malipiero: the clear and morally justified decision against a love poetry that is regarded from a moral point of view. Whereas the later cardinal Pietro Bembo had presented earthly love as a deterrent example and therefore more clearly elaborated the morally didactic function of the histoire and the affetti dogliosi of love, the Franciscan Malipiero, only six years after the first edition of Bembo's Rime, rejected it completely against the background of the discussions about the seductive power of love poetry, since for him the equivalence of reading and fornication is a foregone conclusion. For the first time, the potential exemplary function of a Petrarchan love story, even if considered as being negative, or of a Petrarchist love story mediated by Bembo, is thus denied by the practice of poetic production itself. (Föcking 1993, 232).

Christoph Hoch similarly argues that Malipiero was striving for a "reform of poetry under Christian auspices directed at the literary system of Petrarchism, which was already firmly established in the 1530s" (Hoch 1997, 159).

Linda Maria Koldau has examined literary contrafactures in Italian literature of the Cinquecento in an essay devoting a section to Petrarchan contrafactures. Koldau suggests that Malipiero did not intend "to create high literature, but to offer his readers a Christian alternative to secular literature" and thereby "combined entertainment with edification and teaching" (Koldau 2002, 46 n.4). She distinguishes the Petrarca spirituale from anti-Petrarchism by arguing that Malipiero did not seek to "change the language and poetic expression, but merely to renew the content in a Christian sense" (Koldau 2002, 48 n.9). Moreover, she no longer uses the concept of parody, but consistently takes recourse to the concept of contrafacture.

By the way, the term contrafacture was first introduced in 1928 by Thérèse Labande-Jeanroy in an article on Stefano Colonna, whose poems, compared to Malipiero's, have received little attention from researchers. This article has therefore been almost completely ignored by critics. It was only in 1987 that Guido Arbizzoni cited it in his own article on Colonna. At the very beginning of his essay, Arbizzoni points out that it is not certain who the author of the contrafactures is, since the title page presents Petrarch's beloved, Laura, as the author and Stefano Colonna as the one who "found" the poems (Arbizzoni 1987, 539–540). Labande-Jeanroy had already cast doubt on the author's identification and assigned the contrafactures to Pietro Antonio Miero, who signed the dedicatory letter to Vittoria Farnese that precedes the contrafactures. It might be that the Stefano Colonna mentioned on the title page is Stefano Colonna di Palestrina (1490–1548). But this would mean that the poems appeared post mortem (Stefano Colonna died in 1548, while the book appeared in 1552). It is also possible that a son of this Stefano Colonna of the same name is the author of the work (this younger Stefano Colonna is said to have died at a relatively young age in 1567). The portrait on the frontispiece, however, shows a man of advanced age, although it must be objected that the woodcut shows an idealised image of an author. Still, the sitter here does in fact resemble the portrait of Stefano Colonna di Palestrina made by Agnolo Bronzino two years before the latter's death in 1546, although this resemblance does not constitute sufficient proof.

Furthermore, we would like to suggest a second hypothesis about the author already proposed by Labande-Jeanroy: is it not possible that Stefano Colonna is as much a part of the fiction as Laura, and that he is the Colonna mentioned by Petrarch in RVF 10, i.e., a contemporary of Laura's who could indeed have "found" her Rime, as the title suggests? After all, the poems are "pervenuti alle mani" of Stefano Colonna, as the title indicates, and were not explicitly written by him. The author of this work would therefore be Miero, whose identity, however, also lies completely in the darkness of history. A certain Pietro Antonio Miero appears in Paolo Pino's Dialogo di Pittura of 1548 and is introduced there as a "giovane Padovano tutto scintillante di virtù, et amato dal nostro Pino come egli stesso" (Pino 1548, 34r.): accordingly, Miero would be located in Padua as a friend of the painter Paolo Pino.

Labande-Jeanroy and Arbizzoni do not regard the contrafactures as parodies, but as "trasformazione seria" of the Canzoniere (Arbizzoni 1987, 540), even though Labande-Jeanroy repeatedly expresses her displeasure with Miero's contrafactures. According to Arbizzoni, the fact that each contrafacture is preceded by the incipit of the Petrarchan original poems establishes a responsive relationship between the texts and in this way "il lettore è richiamato a mantenere il contatto [ai testi petrarcheschi], a non perdere mai il segno" (Arbizzoni 1987, 541).

Arbizzoni furthermore distinguishes two main compositional techniques in the contrafactures. On the one hand, he argues, they retain the rhyme scheme and the rhyming words. On the other hand, he recognises in the text the will to create a "verosimiglianza" through which a "plausibile movimento diegetico" emerges (Arbizzoni 1987, 541). Like Malipiero's contrafactures, he continues, Colonna's are moralising; they are not so much genuine "responses" to Petrarch's poems but "commentaries" (Arbizzoni 1987, 544). Arbizzoni sees an important difference to the Petrarca spirituale in the fact that Colonna's Sonetti do not aim to replace the Canzoniere. Rather, Colonna leaves the incipit of each of Petrarch's poems before his contrafactures; his rewritings stand complementarily next to the original texts, as Arbizzoni explains: "il nuovo testo non vuol sostituirsi al suo modello, ma affiancarlo e duplicarlo [. . .]" (Arbizzoni 1987, 546). Colonna's contrafactures thus function only as commentaries on the original text, which does not lose its status as a model text in its own right, but is supplemented by a new perspective.

Andrea Torre, too, has recently examined Lucia Colao's Rime (Torre 2017), placing Colao's contrafactures in a "ricezione produttiva" (Torre 2017, 61) of Petrarch and showing how Colao uses the rewritings "alla narrazione della propria personale storia lirica" (Torre 2017, 64). Torre is also able to show that Colao does not refer to Petrarch's Canzoniere alone, but was familiar with the contrafactures of Stefano Colonna and quotes the Rime spirituali of Vittoria Colonna (Torre 2017, 77). Furthermore, Torre 2019 examined other rewritings of model authors in the early modern period (including Ovid, Vergil, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariost, and Tasso). He emphasises that every rewriting of a model text is also an interpretation of that text, thereby preserving it within the "cultural memory" (Torre 2019, 21). He distinguishes roughly between two forms: "la rimozione pressoché completa del dettato ipotestuale" and "un suo addomesticamento entro i domìni dell'allegoria" (Torre 2019, 22). In the chapter on Petrarch's Canzoniere, Torre focuses in particular on commentaries that attempt to give the poems a religious meaning (Torre 2019, 161–168, e.g. in Pietro Vincenzo Sagliano's Esposizione spirituale sopra il Petrarca, Naples, Cacchi, 1591), before concentrating on Malipiero and Colao.

#### 2.2.3 Definition of the term contrafacture

Contrafacture (from Latin contra "against" and facere "to make, to produce") means the replacement of the text of an existing song with a new text without changing the music (see Wilkins 1999, 446). The term denotes both the process of artistic production and the result. Applied to poetry, a contrafacture refers to the substitution of the text of an existing poem with a new text without changing the form, metre, or rhyme scheme. The replacement of text central to this compositional technique can take different degrees, ranging widely from the substitution of individual words to the creation of a completely new text retaining the original form.

The status of contrafactures is paradoxical, because in correcting Petrarch's Canzoniere, they constantly refer to the original poems. On the one hand, this happens in paratexts, such as the titles of the works, which sometimes explicitly refer to Petrarch's original, and in the prefaces, which justify the rewritings. On the other hand, this also takes place in the texts themselves: for instance, Stefano Colonna quotes the beginning of the first verse of the original poems before each contrafacture, as if the reader should have in mind the original text. In addition, the rewritten texts are strongly reminiscent of the originals and the mode of correction always raises the question of what was actually corrected, compelling readers to return to the original poem for an answer unless they can quote it from memory. Moreover, in many texts, tension only arises when the altered text is read next to the original. Stefano Colonna smooths out any potential for conflict and strips all discrepancies from his contrafactures, which only find their way back into the text when they are read against the background of the original poems: after all, he titles his contrafactures "risposte" and in order to understand what his fictional Laura is responding to, one must have an intimate knowledge of the original. Paradoxically, although the authors of the contrafactures are trying to replace what they considered to be the "harmful" original text, the very nature of their approach means that they are constantly referring to the poems they are trying to replace. This indicates that there are different types of contrafactures, as we will attempt to differentiate below.

Similar to contrafacture, the term parody (from Greek παρ-ῳδία par-odía "counter-song") refers to the imitation of an existing text by closely following its linguistic expression. But unlike parody, a contrafacture is not meant to mock or distort. Critics, however, such as Quondam 1991a and Gorni 1984, among others, like to call the spiritual rewritings of Petrarch parodies. This follows from the attitude that has determined the reception of these texts, which denied them any serious character and interpreted them as "distorting" imitations that "disfigure" the original text.

#### 2.2.4 Modes of contrafacture: an attempt at classification

In all contrafactures, the metre, rhyme scheme, and form remain unchanged. Even if individual rhyming words are replaced, the original rhyme scheme is usually maintained. Within this fixed framework, the authors make further changes which can be roughly divided into two modes:

#### (1) Allegorisation and resemantisation

Resemantisation is to be understood as the attribution of a different meaning to an identical sign or chain of signs without substituting words. This mode is frequently observed, though it is not usually used alone, but is complemented by mode (2). This includes contemporary commentaries on the Canzoniere that attempt to give it a religious level of meaning (Torre 2019 has analysed these in detail).

#### (1.a) Resemantisation through new context

A special case is represented by poems that are neither rewritten nor directly resemantised, but remain textually unchanged in their entirety. Only the changed context of the overall composition may lead to resemantisation. In the case of the Petrarca spirituale, this applies to just one sonnet, RVF 232: this poem laments the anger of several ancient historical figures that led to both their physical and spiritual death. Although a mortal sin does emerge here as the theme, it is already condemned by the "real" Petrarch, so that Malipiero does not change the sonnet at all, but simply inserts it as such among his contrafactures. Thus, the words are not changed, but the context is.

#### (1.b) Special case: erasure

So far unmentioned by scholars is the fact that Girolamo Malipiero and other authors of contrafactures do not rework all the poems of the Canzoniere. For example, Malipiero deletes RVF 360, a canzone that depicts a psychomachia between a speaker suffering from love sickness, Cupid, and the power of judgement. Why this poem in particular is not reworked cannot be entirely explained. It is unproductive to assume that it would simply have been too "difficult" to correct this poem, which is entirely focused on love sickness. Besides, the erasure of texts changes the overarching structure of a collection.

#### (1.c) Special case: spiritual centone poetry

The centone poem should be mentioned here as a special case which combines verses from different poems from Petrarch's Canzoniere into new poems. The original text of these individual verses is usually preserved – minor syntactical adaptations, however, cannot be ruled out. The meaning of the individual verses changes through the combination with verses from other contexts as well as through the newly emerging overall context of the new text. Christoph Hoch has devoted a chapter of his insightful study on cento poetry to the spiritual cento (Hoch 1997, 155–174).

#### (2) Substitution

#### (2.a) Substitution of individual syntagms

This includes contrafactures in which either only individual words or syntagms are replaced, while most of the original text remains intact. In particular, the incipit is often unchanged, as this element makes it easier to recognise the original Petrarchan text or at least to find it again with the help of an index.

#### (2.b) Preservation of individual syntagms

In contrast to mode (2.a), this mode includes contrafactures in which the majority of the original text has been replaced in such a way that only individual words or syntagms remain, including mostly the rhyming words. The gradations between these two modes are fluid.

(2.c) Borderline case: preservation of the rhyme scheme

This mode covers contrafactures in which the original text has been completely replaced and only the rhyme scheme remains. However, such texts can only be reasonably described as contrafactures if the authors explicitly name the model and the technique of their rewritings. Otherwise, almost all of Petrarchist poetry would have to be considered as counterfactual, which does not seem reasonable.

#### 2.2.5 Motivation and objectives of the contrafactures

Malipiero and Salvatorino accompany their contrafactures with theoretical reflections, in a dialogue and an introduction in the Petrarca spirituale, and in a long poetological sonnet series in the Thesoro. (Stefano Colonna and Lucia Colao, by contrast, do not preface their contrafactures with explanatory prefaces.)

#### 2.2.5.1 Petrarca spirituale: the dialogue between Maripetro and Petrarcha

The dialogue preceding the contrafactures introduces the figures of Maripetro and Petrarcha (in order to distinguish them from the real authors Malipiero and Petrarch, we will use the name variants found in the Italian text to designate the fictive figures of the dialogue). Here, Maripetro first reports in a long monologue on the circumstances that led to the conversation: on a literary pilgrimage to the tomb and residence of Petrarch in Arquà, he retreats on 8 June 1534 during the midday heat into a shady and lonely little wood, when suddenly a person unknown to him approaches (Malipiero 1536, 2r.). This person is none other than Petrarcha, who greets Maripetro and addresses him by name – not immodestly, the text tells us that Petrarcha has already heard of the Franciscan friar, while the latter does not recognise the poet at first (Malipiero 1536, 2r.). Petrarcha willingly gives the friar information and explains why he must wander the earth as a spirit: God had punished him for his love poems and Petrarcha would only find redemption when his poems had been "ritrattat[e]". Maripetro first pretends not to be able to comprehend God's judgement. The fact that Maripetro has embarked on a journey to Arquà suggests that he is an admirer of the Canzoniere, whose poems he claims are "leggiadre" and "tutte buone" (Malipiero 1536, 2v.) – this may come as a surprise if one reads the dialogue to the end and comes across Maripetro's later harsh criticism of the Canzoniere. Likewise, Maripetro initially pretends not to be able to recognise anything offensive about the poems, since he interprets Laura as an allegory of wisdom:

Ho pur inteso io [. . .] che sotto velame di non so che madonna Laura, volesti figurare la Sapientia delle cui bellezze l'huomo, al quale massimamente la virtu aggrada; fassi degno amatore; et per conseguente, che tutti i versi et canti tuoi d'amore, sono allegorici, et hanno sensi spirituali. (Malipiero 1536, 2v.)

Maripetro himself had thus already "changed" the Canzoniere – or as one might say: he has "read it contrafactually" – by imposing upon it a new spiritual meaning. Petrarcha reacts dryly by posing a rhetorical question: "Con che evidenza di verita si puo questo dire, confessando io nel primo de tutti i miei sonetti; che gli amorosi affetti, de quai tante rime io scrissi, mi vennero per giovenile errore?" (Malipiero 1536, 2v.). This rejects the allegorical interpretation of the Canzoniere on the grounds that the proemial sonnet does speak of love and youthful mistakes, which, according to Petrarcha, should be understood literally and not figuratively. Right at the outset, then, the Petrarca spirituale refuses any allegorical interpretation of the Canzoniere, since this would make a correction of the original Petrarchan text unnecessary (see Quondam 1991c, 207–208). The poems therefore did not arise from "sana sapientia", Maripietro argues, but from "insana concupiscenza" (Malipiero 1536, 3r.), which of course also constitutes an interpretation of the Canzoniere that can nevertheless justify a correction (see Quondam 1991c, 207–208).

After this explanation, which convinces Maripetro, the friar responds by asking Petrarcha why he published his poems at all, in defiance of the expectation of Christian morality. The latter replies that "[l]a grand importunita de nobili amici, et l'appetito di eterna fama si del nome mio, come di quella, che cotanto, amai" (Malipiero 1536, 3r.), i.e., the craving for fame, in moral theology superbia, was the cause of his sin. Contrary to his initial admiration, Maripetro now joins in the criticism of the Canzoniere and accuses Petrarcha of negligence, arguing that Petrarcha should have known that his poems would provide "occasione ad altri di carnale concupiscenza" and harm "tanti giovani amatori del mondo" (Malipiero 1536, 3v.). But Maripetro also differentiates between (corrupt and spoiling) res and (elegant and seductive) verba: the young lovers would be so attracted to Petrarch's "polito et leggiadro dire" that his "vanita essere piu lette, commentate, et studiate, che'l vangielo di Christo" (Malipiero 1536, 3v.) – here Maripetro's true face is revealed, and he goes on to indulge in countless reproaches.

Petrarcha explains in detail the unfavourable state he is in: although he has the form of a body, he can no longer intervene in the world, "fuori di spatio temporale, non posso produrre atto alcuno meritevole, come sarebbe questo, di ritrattare la sconvenevole materia de gli predetti miei versi" (Malipiero 1536, 4r.). Noteworthy here is the notion of merit, for in order to atone for one's sins, a meritorious work on the part of the believer is required according to Catholic doctrine: the correction of the Canzoniere thus becomes a meritorious work of lived charity in the theological sense – on the one hand for the salvation of Petrarch's soul, and on the other to preserve the young innocent lovers.

The poet now sets out to explain to Maripetro what the task of rewriting involves. First of all, he differentiates between linguistic expression and the content of his Canzoniere:

cosi ancora potrai ad esso Re celeste riconcigliare le mie thosche e volgari Muse, tal che espurgate d'ogni otioso parlare, et ridotte per quelle istesse rime et vocaboli a cantare cose tutte honeste e sante; io sia detto per l'avenire Petrarca theologo et spirituale. (Malipiero 1536, 4r.)

According to this text, the reprehensible aspect of his poetry does not lie in the formal and linguistic design of the texts (verba), but in the things sung about (res). To this end, Petrarcha argues, Maripetro should "espurga[re]" the poems, i.e., purify them from "ogni ozioso parlare": the reprehensible thing does not concern the parlare as such, but lies in the definition of parlare as "ozioso", i.e., as useless and idle, which in the form of the acedia represents a mortal sin. It is not the otium that should be sung about – as Petrarcha has done so far – but "cose tutte honeste e sante". The harmful contents should be replaced by "i nuovi et buoni concetti" (Malipiero 1536, 5r.), which Petrarcha's wandering spirit had already thought up. While his poetry had hitherto been "noioso all'huomo", through the contrafactures it should now become "utile e profittevole" (Malipiero 1536, 5r.).

Maripetro accepts the challenge, but at the same time he points out that no one will want to read these corrected Rime:

Io comprendo et giudico per fermo, che quando in tal degno essercitio havremo con sofficiente castigatione ridotte le rime tue a sacri et spirituali soggetti, potremo col satirico poeta Persio ancho noi ragionevolmente dire: Quis leget haec? (Malipiero 1536, 5v.)

According to Maripetro, a spiritualised version of the Canzoniere would meet with little interest: "Laonde io conchiudo, che se tu ti farai theologo et spirituale, da niuno, overo da pochi sarai apprezzato" (Malipiero 1536, 6r.). And yet the author Malipiero has undertaken the task to rewrite the Canzoniere, which shows that he hoped to reach at least a small readership.

Incidentally, Petrarcha also briefly quotes "il laureato Aligheri, gloria prima della patria mia" (Malipiero 1536, 6r.), but without going further into Dante's poetry: Dante does not seem to be an alternative for poetry.

#### 2.2.5.2 Malipiero's Introduttione

In the new edition of the Petrarca spirituale published by Comin da Trino in Venice in 1545, Malipiero inserted an "Introduttione" between the sonnets and the canzoni. The text itself indirectly names 1543 as the year of its composition: "Esso [scilicet Francesco Freggipane] [è morto] l'anno novamente passato, che fu quadragesimo secondo apresso il mille e cinquecento [. . .]" (Malipiero 1545, 94v.), i.e., Francesco Freggipane, Bishop of Agrigento, had died a year earlier in 1542, from which it can be deduced that the writing of the "Introduttione" took place in 1543. In the short treatise, Malipiero develops in ten chapters the theological foundations for his project of correcting the Canzoniere, which Malipiero, however, only addresses in the last chapter. Quondam goes so far as to recognise in this text "il momento fondativo [. . .] di una nuova tradizione (quella della poesia spirituale)" (Quondam 1991c, 214) of the secondo Cinquecento. He argues that Malipiero's treatise would have remained unnoticed if he had not immediately put the theoretical principles developed in it into practice: herein lay "il punto di forza" of the Petrarca spirituale (Quondam 1991c, 215).

In the first chapter, Malipiero highlights the desire for the good inherent in all beings (Malipiero 1545, 90r.). In order to attain this good, Malipiero argues, human beings, unlike all other creatures, possess free will (Malipiero 1545, 91r.). Malipiero emphasises the value of works of charity, as human beings reach heaven "per sua spontanea volonta et amore" (Malipiero 1545, 92v.) and "fede formata" (Malipiero 1545, 93r.), with the help of which one "volendo et santamente operando possa pervenire" to heaven (Malipiero 1545, 93r.). God had predestined humans in the sense that he had given them the promise of salvation, but on the basis of this promise and after the gift of grace, one must not remain inactive, "a guisa di poltroniere et codardo", which is why God "gli a vogliuto aggiungere per questo la [n]ecessita di operare virtuosamente" (Malipiero 1545, 93r.), remembering here the rejection of "ozioso parlare" in the introductory dialogue. Without love, no human being would reach the divine goal, and Malipiero defines love neoplatonically as "vero et iusto Amore, ilquale, secondo la dottrina theologica, altro non è, che desiderio di bellezza" (Malipiero 1545, 104r.). Accordingly, Malipiero equates the highest beauty with God: "la vera bellezza solamente consista nelle cose divine" (Malipiero 1545, 104r.). The Council of Trent would make this concept of the merit of good works one of its central doctrines, defined as the cooperation of the believer with God's grace in contradistinction to the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone. Malipiero thus situates his treatise and the Petrarca spirituale in highly topical theological debates, while siding with the conservatives on the eve of the Council. At the same time, Malipiero also contradicts Petrarch's Secretum, in which the interlocutor Franciscus confesses before Augustine that he cannot restrain his desire: "desiderium frenare non valeo" (Petrarca 2004b, 398). Malipiero, however, does not discuss any inability of human will in the face of an overpowering desire.

Rather, according to Malipiero, in order to guide the will along a path that can be considered "righteous", what is required is knowledge of the "true" goal of human striving: divine truth is revealed to human beings solely through the Holy Scriptures and their interpretation by the Church. Here, too, in this emphasis on tradition alongside Holy Scripture, in the accompanying rejection of the principle of sola scriptura, and in the rejection of independent Bible reading without a mediating ecclesiastical authority, we find clear avowals of traditional Catholic theology. In this context, Malipiero manages a clever transition to the topic of Christian literature. Since the ancient philosophers were denied knowledge of Christian truth, he argues, their works, no matter how learned and eloquent, are also to be condemned as "libri di morte" (Malipiero 1545, 97v.). The books of the ancient philosophers are also to be rejected insofar as they endeavoured to develop a doctrine of the way of life towards a goal that can be achieved in this worldly life; Malipiero cites fame, love, and power, among other examples. He sees the goal of the Christian life, by contrast, as salvation in the afterlife, which he defines in a typical Christian paradox as "true life", while earthly life represents "true death": seen in this light, the books of ancient philosophers are "libri di morte".

Malipiero moreover explains that not all believers are able to read the Holy Scriptures, nor do they have sufficient (theological) education (Malipiero 1545, 98r.). Therefore, he argues that

à questo effetto il divino instinto ha comossi, tra gli huomini: molti nobili spiriti à componere libri di materie spirituali con semplice et volgar locquella, fondate sopra le scritture sacre et autorita delli dottori catholici, per modo che sofficientemente possono gli ignoranti dalle divote lettioni di cotai trattati, essere instrutti dell'ultimo loro fine: et da gli intelligibili sentimenti de sermoni sacri essere eccitati al divino amore. (Malipiero 1545, 98r.)

Once again, Malipiero rejects the principle of sola scriptura in favour of tradition, the authority of ecclesiastical scholars, and mediation by those same ecclesiastical authorities as well as by vernacular devotional literature, which must be written in "simple and vernacular language" so that even the "ignorant" would have access to divine truth. Malipiero does not make it explicit, but here, too, the context suggests that his Petrarca spirituale is meant to be such a "book of spiritual content with a simple and vernacular idiom". Malipiero thus presents his work as a via media between the mediation of the Bible and the teachings of faith (res), and the appropriation of a vernacular poetry to be corrected on the level of content, whose language (verba), however, is useful for the communication with the "ignorant" readers.

According to Malipiero, the reading of such texts is particularly effective because it unites the intellectual power of the anima intellectiva with perception through the senses:

O quanta giova all'humana salute leggere spesso cose sante. Et cio è vero, perche havendo l'Anima intelletiva grandissima unione con i sensi corporei, è molto aiutata à destare in se i buoni spiriti, à riaccendere il lume naturale, à concipere honeste cogitationi, à producere santi desideri, à fare celesti proponimenti, et habituarsi à contemplare le cose eterne, quando ode et ascolta parole di santità, et le divine laudi, espresso massimamente et prononciate dalla viva voce: che da lei è formata per gli organi corporali. (Malipiero 1545, 98r.–v.)

The reader, that is to say, should read the devotional texts aloud with a "living voice" in order to be able to "hear" them in this way: the sound of poetry is supposed to support the religious message. This is the background before which Malipiero comes to the subject of the "spirito della poesia" (Malipiero 1545, 98v.). According to him, such poetry is useful if the believer is aroused by a "melodia musicale" (Malipiero 1545, 98v.), as long as it is performed "santamente", and if the believer's spirit is raised to heaven by the melody (Malipiero 1545, 98v.). For this purpose, he continues, God has endowed some people with the "spirit of poetry":

[. . .] ha infuso et donato à molto svegliati intelletti lo spirito della poesia, cosi nell'antico come nuovo testamento: et da quello non mediocre copia n'è sta fatta di cantici, salmi, et hynni sacri, pieni di maravigliosi mysteri et soavissime consonanze: percioche essendo composti per modi, numeri, tempi, et mesure, et per conseguente con figure metrice, fanno dolce harmonia: laquale perche ad ogni uno diletti, à tutti è utilissima, quando è usata (come dicemmo) per concenti quasi angelici ordinati in Dio. (Malipiero 1545, 98v.)

In both the Old and New Testaments, he notes, one finds examples of "chants," "psalms" and "hymns" – that is to say, examples of poetry whose content means to reveal divine mysteries and whose tonal harmony is based on the use of regular metres ("modi, numeri, tempi, et mesure [. . .] con figure metrice"). It is, he argues, the interplay of utility ("utilissima") and pleasure ("diletti") that makes these texts effective in communicating a religious message.

According to Malipiero, the well-wrought form of poetry is based on the principle of proportion and not only triggers pleasure in human beings, but can also comfort and even heal. He quotes here, among other things, the story of King Saul and David (1 Sam 16:14–23) and, for the first time, Petrarch with his sonnet RVF 102 ("Cesare poi che'l traditor d'Egitto"; Malipiero 1545, 100r.). This juxtaposition is revealing inasmuch as Saul only seeks pleasure in music because he is possessed by an evil spirit and God has abandoned him – the same reasons why he would eventually fail and commit suicide. Petrarch is likewise cited here as a negative example; he too is, in a sense, possessed by "an evil spirit", namely sinful lust and the striving for glory. Malipiero argues that music can therefore have a healing effect because the human mind is so influenced by the harmony of music that it "fixes" the disposition of the mind (Malipiero 1545, 100r.). However, content and form must be congruent (otherwise Petrarch would have been able to "heal" himself with his poetry): the melody of poetry can only be beneficial if it also conveys religious content.

Against this background, Malipiero condemns "modern" poets who devoted their talent to carnal love, by which Malipiero means Petrarch and Petrarchists:

Ma ò tempi nostri infelicissimi et tenebrosi, quanto errore, et quanto abuso stomachevole hoggidi circo cio, si vede tra Mortali? concio sia cosa, che lo studio di si nobile scientia et arte, divinamente ritrovata per lodare et glorificare il sommo Creatore, et per essercitio di spirituale amore, et per incominciare in terra il degno ufficio, che dee continouare eternalmente in cielo, sia usurpato da molti de Moderni versificatori à commercio d'amor carnale, à corrutella del Mondo, et in biasmo et onta dell'eterno Dio. [. . .] Et ciechi non s'accorgono, quanto per ciò si facciano colpevoli si, che di suplicio eterno siano puniti: iquali havendo la mente di molta contaminatione bruttata et offoscato l'intelletto, cercano medesimamente contaminare et imbarbigliare l'animo altrui [. . .]: percioche sotto gli amorosi versi et lusinghevoli parolette prendono occasione et materia di una concupiscenza et illecita voluttà. (Malipiero 1545., 103 r°–v°)

Poetry is defined here by Malipiero as "scientia et arte", arte here probably has the meaning of "craft". It was invented, Malipiero argues, by God and fulfilled the purpose of praising him. Malipiero considers using poetry for other purposes to be "usurpation", which many "moderni versificatori" commit, and usurping divine poetry to lead to the "corrutella" of the world and to "colp[a]", meaning sin. This attack can be interpreted as an assault on "il sistema linguistico e culturale del Classicismo bembiano" (Quondam 1991c, 220). Based on this scathing analysis of contemporary vernacular poetry, Malipiero tries to develop solutions to return poetry to its original function according to the biblical model. His proposal is simple: addressing the community of poets, he urges: "aplicate anchora voi le Muse vostre (come si conviene) circa cose celeste et divine: Et in tal modo farete senza fallo opere lodevoli et degne di celebre memoria" (Malipiero 1545, 104r.).

The Franciscan friar also quotes Dante, calling him "il theologo poeta" (Malipiero 1545, 111r.). Yet there is no question of Malipiero correcting Dante; quite the opposite, Dante had understood that the Cross was the only means of giving poetry the right melody:

Et cio bene intese Dante, il quale (come si legge nelli cantici del paradiso) sollevato al cielo di Marte, pone in quello con gran misterio il segno della santa croce, formata di anime de Beati, iquali esseno stati precipui et studiosi in meditare l'asprezze passione del Signore, meritorno di gustare et sentire quanto fusse dolce et soave la melodia di essa croce: et però assomigliandola à strumenti musicali cosi dice. (Malipiero 1545, 113r.–v.)

From this, however, Malipiero does not derive an alternative classicism based on Dante: this once again shows that Malipiero is a classicist at least on the linguistic level, insofar as he adheres to Petrarch's linguistic primacy and "only" wants to correct the contents.

It is only in the tenth chapter of his treatise (from 111r°) that Malipiero finally elaborates on his contrafactures, using the term "mutazione" to describe his undertaking (Malipiero 1545, 111r.). The aim of this endeavour is "d'essere profitevole à suo lettore si, che possino aspirare al fine della beata vita" (Malipiero 1545, 111r.). The love poems are "avelenate et pestifere lettioni", which make the reader so ill that "sia contaminata la mente et corrotto l'animo, perche i malvagi parlari [. . .] corrompono i buoni costume" (Malipiero 1545, 111r.); more concretely, the reading of profane love poetry leads to readers being given "materia et occasione all'anime ragionevoli di fornicare per adulterino amore in ingiuria et onta del sommo Creatore" (Malipiero 1545, 111r.). Petrarch's mistake was that he did not distinguish between two different types of melody: "non facendo distintione tra la melodia, che diletta solamente il senso del'udito corporeo, il cui fine è cattivo, et la melodia, che diletta il senso dell'udito spirituale, il cui fine è buono" (Malipiero 1545, 112v.). Poetry should thus appeal to the inner senses. Moreover, Malipiero justifies his project by saying that Petrarch himself regretted his poems: "dopò molti anni dall'obito suo, aperti per gratia divina gli occhi della mente, ha convertita la cithara sua à canto di melodia spirituale" (Malipiero 1545, 113r.). However, Malipiero is well aware that "le modificate ode et cantilene non havranno possuto in ògni parte conservare tutta la loro polidezza et leggiadria" (Malipiero 1545, 113r.).

#### 2.2.5.3 Salvatorino's introduction in the Thesoro de Sacra Scrittura

Salvatorino's contrafactures are preceded by a "Prefatione dell'opera / in sonetti .XXI. tra se retrograde". The poet himself explains the number of twenty-one stanzas at the end of the text as a multiplication of the divine numbers three and seven (XXI, 281; as the edition contains neither continuous numbering of leaves or pages nor numbering of verses or stanzas, we indicate the stanza in Roman numerals and the verses in Arabic numerals in order to aid the reader's orientation). However, this self-imposed number of stanzas is not correct, and this is only the first of many oddities of this composition: after the twenty-first sonnet, there is another twenty-second stanza. The technique of the sonetti tra sé retrogradi is unusual, too: on each page of the "Prefatione" there are two stanzas, of which the upper one forms a sonnet with two quartets and two tercets, and the lower one is a form that conversely consists of two tercets and two quartets. The lower stanza reuses the rhyme scheme of the upper poem in mirrored order: thus the rhyme scheme of the first page, i.e., the first two stanzas, is abba abba cdc dcd / dcd cdc abba abba. However, Salvatorini is not satisfied with mirroring the rhyme scheme alone, but adopts the same rhyming words and the same rhyme scheme throughout all twenty-one stanzas, namely "sette, segno, disegno, mette, benedette, ingegno, degno, concette, mosse, camino, fosse, divino, mosse, festino" (to "mette" and "mosse" Salvatorino adds different prefixes). The twentysecond stanza consists only of a quartet and a tercet with the rhyme scheme abba cdc, using the same rhyming words as in the remaining stanzas, which are additionally reinforced here by internal rhymes. Salvatorino so creates a tight formal corset for himself. It is therefore hardly surprising that the text often repeats itself in terms of content. The formal constraints sometimes necessitate a free use of syntax, which makes it quite difficult to understand the text; Salvatorino's "Prefatione" seems clumsy and awkward as a result.

In the first stanza, a speaker who identifies himself with the author dates the beginning of his writing to 1537: "Nel mille cinque cento trenta sette / [. . .] / Si cominciario queste benedette / Rime [. . .]" (I, 1, 5–7). Moreover, it is clear that at this point he was already familiar with the contrafactures of Malipiero, whom he explicitly refers to as a model:



Malipiero's Petrarca spirituale had thus preceded him (v. 14). It is noteworthy that the "bel leggiadro stil" (v. 17) is not attributed to Petrarch here, but to Malipiero himself. This writing style is like its author, "Santo Divino" (v. 17), and is contrasted with Salvatorino's own "[stile] rude" (v. 18), which seems paradoxical, since Salvatorino also apparently adopts Petrarch's words: the style would therefore have to be similar, at least linguistically, though here the modestia topos certainly plays not a small role in the self-characterisation as "rude". Like Malipiero, Salvatorino sets out to purge the Canzoniere of the error of earthly love, even if, unlike Malipiero, this project is not staged as the commission of a deceased Petrarch, but of God, who makes Salvatorino his instrument:


In the marginal notes, Salvatorino "proves" that Petrarch had already intended this reorientation towards the spiritual during his lifetime with a reference to: "Pet.trion./ de la divi/ nita", i.e., "Petrarca Trionfo della Divinità". According to Salvatorino, the Trionfi were thus written after the Canzoniere in an act of penitence; and since they culminated in the triumph of God, Petrarch had intended a turn towards the spiritual for his other works, which he was not able to realise for the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta due to his death.

In the following stanzas, Salvatorino moves away from Petrarch and Malipiero and digresses and summarises all kinds of contemporary history and stories of divine deeds from the Bible. Finally, after long passages praising God, Salvatorino suddenly returns to Malipiero: the author asks himself where his reflections have led him: "Ma dove son?" (XIX, 255). More profound theoretical considerations are not found in Salvatorino's "Prefatione". Here, a Latin dedicatory poem by an unidentifiable Santino Coferino (f. A iii r°) is more precise:

S. Sanctini Coferini in Salvatorinum carmen

Non Nymphas, Satyros, Veneres, Puerumque, minacem, Furta Deum gentis Martia bella canit; Hic canit historias legis veterisq[ue]; novaeq[ue]; Et servat numeros Docte Petrarcha tuos; Tu Francisce, tuo cecinisti carmine Lauram, Virginis Hic sobolem, caelicolumq[ue]; choros; Publica Res Christi Sanctum venerare poema, Et legat hoc Hominum docta Corona, iube.

Eiusdem ad lectorem. Hic vatis partes; nam miscuit utile dulci, Quod iuvat, et prodest, accipe lector opus, Olim qui Lauram, nunc legem laudat utranq[ue]; Arni igitur castas percole castalides.

By Santino Coferino on the song of Salvatorino. Not of the nymphs, satyrs, love-goddesses, and the threatening boy, their secrets, the god of the heathen, the wars of Mars, he sings; this one sings of the stories of the old and new law, and serves your melody, learned Petrarch; you, Francis, sang of Laura in your song; this one of the Virgin's offspring and the choirs of the celestials; Respublica Christi, venerate this sacred poem, and command that the learned assembly of men read it. From the same to the reader. Here are the pieces of a poet, for he mixes the useful with the sweet, take, reader, the work that delights and benefits. He who once praised Laura now praises the law of both testaments; honour, then, the chaste Castalides of Arno (my translation).

Coferino explains that Salvatorino writes neither entertaining and mocking poetry nor erotic love poetry, nor does he describe military deeds, but instead deals on the level of content with the Old and New Testaments and uses Petrarch's poetic language for this purpose: here, too, a clear distinction is made between res and verba. In this sense, Salvatorino combines the useful (the message of the Bible) with the entertaining (the melody of the poetry). Coferino already understands that Petrarch does not denote an author alone, but also a style: "Olim qui Lauram, nunc legem laudat utranq[ue]" (v. 12): the general pronoun "qui" – which does not function here as relative pronoun referring to another noun – stands not for Petrarch as author, but for the Petrarchists, and Laura here stands for the earthly beloved about which the Petrarchists generally sing. The spiritual Petrarchists such as Salvatorino replace Laura with Christ, but remain thus Petrarchists.

#### 2.2.6 Reactions to spiritual contrafactures in the Cinquecento

We make only brief remarks here on reactions to spiritual contrafactures in the Cinquecento, since only a relatively small number of documents from this period offer any commentary on contrafactures, and all of these refer to Malipiero's Petrarca spirituale. A positive reaction to this work may be the number of reprints during the sixteenth century, which shows that there must have been a readership and a demand. Furthermore, Malipiero's contrafactures were included in the anthology Libro primo delle rime spirituali, published in 1550 in Venice "al segno della Speranza", next to poets of high reputation such as Vittoria Colonna: Colonna and Malipiero even take up the bulk of the anthology by a wide margin, while only individual sonnets are quoted by other authors. Another positive reaction is the fact that there were imitators – first and foremost Salvatorino, who explicitly praises Malipiero in the preface to his own contrafactures. Moreover, Cecilia Luzzi has shown that the Petrarca spirituale was also the subject of musical settings (Luzzi 2013).

In addition, however, we also find negative reactions to the Petrarca spirituale. Giovambattista Giraldi Cinzio writes:

[. . .] si son trovati e si trovano oggidì alcuni che lasciati i sensi veri fanno tali farnetichi su alcune cose del Petrarcha, che paiono spiritati che dicano le maraviglie, e [. . .] che l'ha fatto spirituali vestendolo da frate minore, e pio cingendolo di corda gli ha messo i zoccoli in piedi. (Cinzio 1554, 77–78)

The author acknowledges a "senso vero" of the Canzoniere from which some of his contemporaries – Cinzio is speaking in the plural – would have departed in frenzy ("farnetichi") and obsession ("spiritati"). Among these, Cinzio specifically mentions someone who had disguised Petrarch as a "frate minore", which is an allusion to Malipiero who is indeed a Franciscan friar.

In addition to Cinzio, Nicolò Franco commented on the Petrarca spirituale. In his Pistole volgari of 1539, Franco writes a letter addressed to Petrarch in which he informs the poet about the current developments of his imitation:

Veggo il Petrarca comentato. Il Petrarca sconcacato. Il Petrarca imbrodolato. Il Petrarca tutto rubbato. Il Petrarca Temporale, e il Petrarca Spirituale. (Franco 1539, 84v.–85r.)

Quondam prefaces his article on the Petrarca spirituale with this quotation: for him, Franco is a "testimone affidabile" of the "processo in corso, nei suoi termini profondi di costituzione del sistema letterario del Classicismo" (Quondam 1991c, 203). Quondam quotes another passage from Franco's Pistole volgari, in which Franco compares the imitation of Petrarch to a theft ("imitare idest rubbare il Petrarca"): Quondam interprets this sentence to mean that Franco regarded the imitation of Petrarch in general as a "comportamento abnorme" (Quondam 1991c, 203).

Finally, a positive assessment comes from Giovanni Aquilano, who quotes Malipiero's contrafactures in his Prediche per tutta la quaresima of 1569. Aquilano does not mention that these are adaptations of Petrarch's sonnets, but simply attributes the authorship to Malipiero, e.g.,

Come bene, di ciò parlando, tocca in un sonetto fra Girolamo Maripietro, dicendo; Et benche del voler habbiam le chiavi, (Aquilano 1569, 272 = sonnet CXXII in Malipiero 1536, 39v. = RVF 155)

Perquesto ancora dice quell venerabil poeta fra Gierolamo Maripietro. Gratie, ch'à pochi il Ciel largo destina. (Aquilano 1569, 509 = sonnet CLXXVIII in Malipero 1536, 53v. = RVF 213)

This shows that Malipiero was taken seriously and revered as an author.

#### 2.2.7 Example analyses

In the following, we illustrate the transformation of the Petrarchan text by analysing the contrafactures of RVF 6 written by Malipiero, Salvatorino, and Colonna:

Sì travïato è 'l folle mi' desio Si traviato è'l folle mi desio et de' lacci d'Amor leggiera et sciolta Ne mai da lacci del nemico è sciolta;

né mi vale spronarlo, o dargli volta, Ne mi vale spronarlo, o dargli volta; ch'Amor per sua natura il fa restio. Che'l senso per natura il fa restio.

Et poi che 'l fren per forza a sé raccoglie,

acerbo frutto, che le piaghe altrui Salubre frutto, che le piaghe altrui

Petrarca, RVF VI. Malipiero, Petrarca spirituale, sonetto VI. f 10v.

a seguitar costei che 'n fuga è volta, In questa vita; ch'in gran fuga è volta, vola dinanzi al lento correr mio, Ch'amaro è piu, che morte il viver mio. che quanto richiamando più l'envio O quante volte richiamando invio per la secura strada, men m'ascolta: Lo spirto a buon camin; ma non m'ascolta; Onde, se la ragione a se non coglie

i' mi rimango in signoria di lui, L'instinto human, m'è forza seguir lui; che mal mio grado a morte mi trasporta: Che, mal mio grado, al vitio mi trasporta. sol per venir al lauro onde si coglie Ma pur il santo legno, onde s'accoglie gustando afflige più che non conforta. Tutte risana, è sol, che mi conforta.

The first verse of Petrarch's sonnet remains untouched in Malipiero's contrafacture, while in the second the syntagma "a seguitar costei [id est Laura]" is replaced by "in questa vita". Petrarch's "mad desire" (v. 1) has strayed from the right path because it has given free rein to its concupiscentia for Laura. Malipiero's desire is also described as insane, "folle", but the cause of his straying remains unclear at first. In Malipiero, life metaphorically turns away "in flight" (v. 2) from the desire of the speaker and yet, paradoxically, cannot free itself from the "fetters of the enemy" (v. 3). This enemy can be interpreted as a designation of "desio", and the Christian context suggests that we understand "nemico" to mean seduction by the devil and thus sin. This is why life slips away from the speaker: sin drives him to death. The consequence is that the life of the lyrical subject is more bitter than death (v. 4).

As with Petrarch, Malipiero's speaker is unable to lead his mind back to the right path by his own efforts (vv. 5–6). Unlike Petrarch, however, it is not love (v. 8) whose nature resists, but "[i]l senso", sensual perception, alluding to the juxtaposition of a form of knowledge through the senses and divine revelation – a possible biblical source could be Mt 16:17: "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven". According to this passage, it is not a physical perception by the senses, symbolised by "flesh and blood", but the divine revelation that has revealed the truth to Simon. The two terms "flesh and blood" may also allude to the Eucharist, which Malipiero again takes up centrally in the tercets in the metaphor of the "fruit that brings salvation" (v. 13).

The first tercet emphasises that reason is not able to restrain the "instinto" (v. 10), the natural drive of human beings, so that the lyrical subject is forced to follow this drive, which leads the subject to sin against his will (v. 11) – in the verb "seguir" (v. 10), Petrarch's "seguitar" (v. 2) is finally taken up again. While in Petrarch the carnal lust of desire (concupiscentia) drives the speaker to death, Malipiero generalises this drive to the whole "instinto human" (v. 10).

Especially in the last tercet, Malipiero makes some striking substitutions: for instance, the wood of the Cross, a metonymy, replaces the laurel tree, and this wood is furthermore characterised as "santo", thus opposing what we can call Petrarch's "profane" laurel tree. Malipiero's contrafacture functions here via a substitution: a secular-profane reference point, the laurel tree, is erased from the poem and replaced by a similar spiritual element. This similarity is provided by the metaphor of the tree and its wood. In Petrarch, the fruit of the laurel tree is bitter (v. 13), since the lyrical subject wants to enjoy the forbidden pleasure of the flesh from it, while the metaphorical fruit of the Cross represents the salvation of Christ and is thus marked as "salubre". In Petrarch, the metaphor alludes to the fruit of the tree of knowledge, the seduction of Eve, and hence to the resulting original sin, while Malipiero's fruit stands as a metaphor for the Eucharist, i.e., for the actualisation through flesh and blood of the sacrificial death of Christ performed on the "legno".

In contrast to the laurel, which inflicts the wounds of original sin on others when tasting its fruit (vv. 13–14), the fruit of the Cross heals "all" wounds, which also refers to the wound of love inflicted by Petrarch. Moreover, the adverb "sol" (v. 14) emphasises that only the Cross can heal the wounds of sin. That Petrarch's desire is precisely such a sin is made explicit by Malipiero through the noun "vitio" (v. 11), which replaces the term "morte" in Petrarch: while Petrarch's speaker is inevitably driven to death by his desire, Malipiero's lyrical subject is "only" driven to sin. Unlike Petrarch, Malipiero's speaker can hope for forgiveness of his sins by turning to the Cross, which gives him the strength to renounce his sinful desire, a strength that Petrarch's subject lacks. In other words, the complete turning of human beings to God, prevented in Petrarch by original sin, is now rectified in Malipiero.

Salvatorino rewrote RVF 6 twice in his contrafactures:

Salvatorino, Thesoro XIII.

Si travagliato è'l folle mio desio A seguir il van' Mondo, che m'hà involta L'alma nel fango, che libera, e sciolta Da Dio fu infusa pur, nel corpo mio; Che quanto piu gridando al ciel' l'envio, Per la strada di Christo, men m'ascolta, Ne con ragion spronarlo o darli volta Mi val, che l'appetito il fa restio; E se tal'hor il freno à se raccoglie, Mi rimarrei in Segnoria di lui, Che da peccati à morte mi trasporta; Se non ch'al'arbor corro, onde si coglie Di vita il frutto, e nelle piaghe altrui

Temprando i sensi miei, mi riconforta.

Salvatorino preserves the expression of the "folle mio desio" and replaces the participle "traviato" with the phonetically similar "travagliato". He also abstracts the image of persecution by replacing Laura, "costei" (v. 2), with the "van[o] Mondo". He thus generalises the problem of sin to the concern for worldly things which implies a neglect of the worship of God. It is noteworthy that, according to Salvatorino, the soul was created "free and detached" (v. 3) from God and "let into the body" (v. 4), while the world corrupts the soul in its metaphorical "swamp" of sinfulness, keeping it unfree and imprisoned, so that human beings then also lose control over their "desio", which here takes on the meaning of willpower. In vain, the lyrical speaker tries to lead his will back to the right path, which leads "per la strada di Christo", i.e., by following Christ, to salvation, metaphorically "al ciel[o]" (v. 5). In Petrarch, the "secura strada" (v. 6) already signifies a moraltheological way of life that leads human beings to God, whereas the path taken by Petrarch's "desio" leads to sin and to death (v. 11). Salvatorino explains that the "secura strada" is the "strada di Christo". Like Malipiero, Salvatorino emphasises that it is the mind, "ragion" (v. 7), that is unable to restrain desire. The term "appetito" (v. 8), like Petrarch's "desio", can denote a sexual desire, but because of its broader reference to the "van' Mondo" (v. 2), it also includes other sins that denounce excessive human attachment to worldly things (e.g., greed, avarice, pride, gluttony, lust).

The first tercet contains only small, albeit particularly revealing, adaptations. For example, Salvatorino changes the verb form "rimango" in the condizionale, "rimarrei" (v. 10), the condition of which is carried out by two conditional clauses. First, the speaker would remain under the bondage (v. 10) of his "appetite" (v. 8) if the latter took the reins and the speaker lost control. This subordinate clause introduced by "se" replaces the clause introduced by "poi che" and relativises the power of the "appetite" through the temporal adverb "tal'hora": the "appetite" is thus only sometimes able to seize control of the speaker. Secondly, however, this only happens when the lyrical subject does not run to the metaphorical tree of the Cross – this substitution of the laurel tree by the tree of the Cross is already known from Malipiero. Unlike Petrarch, who presents the subjection of his speaker to his desire as an inevitable consequence of Cupid's superiority, Salvatorino's speaker can escape death (v. 11) through Christ. The wounds of love inflicted by Laura are replaced in Salvatorino by the wounds of Christ, in whose Passion the lyrical subject can restrain his senses (v. 14 "i sensi"), i.e., his sensual desire.

The second contrafacture goes further in its attempt at Christian substitution. Only the first verse and the rhyming words remain, with minor adjustments (mode 2.c). Both contrafactures follow one another directly, but while Salvatorino gives no biblical passages in the marginal notes for the first version, he cites eight passages for the second version. The riscrittura is thus multiplied both in terms of the number of textual elements that are rewritten and by the number of biblical quotations.

Salvatorino, Thesoro XIIII.

Si mi travaglia il folle mio desio, De questi honor',ed'ambition tal volta; Ch'in tutto non mi sento l'alma sciolta Di ciò voler, si ch'appena son mio: Ma dice il mio conforto, à cui viver m'envio; Ro.15.


The sonnet is undeniably more difficult to understand than the first contrafacture, not only because of the numerous biblical quotations closely interwoven in the text but also because of its inclusion of occult figures unknown to the Bible, like Astaroth (v. 13). The first verse is hardly changed, as in the examples already analysed, but this time Salvatorino puts the verb in the active voice: "mi travaglia" instead of "travagliato è" as in the first contrafacture. This makes it clear that the turn to God is not yet complete, for the lyrical subject is still being tormented by his desire. In addition, the object of desire is now more narrowly defined: it is no longer the whole "vain world" as in the first contrafacture, but honour, i.e., recognition according to human standards, and ambition, i.e., striving and eagerness. Both concepts concern earthly values which would be well known to any reader familiar with Petrarch from the senhal of the laurel. Petrarch's desire for Laura is always also a striving for poetic fame, which Salvatorino now generalises into a striving for honour.

After this manifestation of human weakness, the "conforto" of the lyrical subject whom the subject wants to follow in his way of life is given voice: it is therefore reasonable to see Christ in the "conforto". This is underpinned by the chapter from the Letter to the Romans (Rom 15) quoted in the marginal notes: here Paul explains to his congregation that he wants to "glory through Jesus Christ in those things which pertain to God" (Rom 15:17) and that he has "strived to preach the gospel" among the Gentiles (15:20). Paul therefore did not seek earthly honour, as Salvatorino's speaker does (v. 2 "honor',ed'ambition"). In this sense, according to Paul, believers should not "please [them]selves" (15:1), but "please [their] neighbour for [their] good, to [their] edification" (15:2), or as Salvatorino summarises: "conforto, à cui viver m'envio" (v. 5). Moreover, at this point in the Letter to the Romans, God is called "God of patience and consolation" (15:5), which justifies why Salvatorino can simply call Christ "conforto" (v. 5).

The reference to 2 Macc 11 leads the reader to the account of the war with the commander Lysias and his failed attempt to conquer Judea: his army, the "de vani turba molta" (v. 6), was defeated by the Jews with the help of God, who answered their prayers by providing an angel, "a horseman dressed in white and carrying gold weapons" (2 Macc 11:8). Salvatorino then paraphrases Jotham's fable from Judges 9:7–21, where Jotham tells the citizens of Shechem a fable in which the trees once wanted to anoint a king (v. 7 "regno") among themselves. But neither the olive tree nor the fig tree nor the vine – the "boni Arbor" (v. 8) – wanted to accept this title, because, according to Salvatorino, they spurned the crown (v. 8 "sprezzato"). Finally, the trees turned to a thorn bush (v. 7 "spina"), which accepted the burden of kingship, while also threatening to "devour the cedars of Lebanon" (Judges 9:15) if the trees were to be disloyal. At the same time, the image of the thorn and the kingdom alludes to Christ, "King of kings" (1 Tim 6:15), and to his crown of thorns (Matt 27:29). Salvatorino thus undertakes an allegorical interpretation of Jotham's fable, transforming the image of the laurel tree, as Malipiero and Salvatorino had already done: here the laurel tree becomes the thorn bush and the crown of thorns, which in turn stands metonymically for the Cross.

The first tercet begins a series of questions posed by the lyrical subject to a person addressed in the second person singular (v. 9 "te"), behind whom probably stands Christ, his "conforto" (v. 5). The second question alludes to the prophet Daniel, which Salvatorino has thankfully inserted in the marginal notes. The prophet Daniel is singled out as the one among the Chaldeans who had worn their "great crown". Since Daniel was never crowned, this is a metaphor: the prophet is above the other Chaldeans, who are identified in the Book of Daniel as "magician[s], or astrologer[s]" (Dan 2:10), because he is the only one who is able, through divine inspiration, to interpret the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar.

The second tercet takes up the theme of divination and switches to another biblical figure: according to 1 Sam 18:10–12, Saul, the first king of the united tribes of Israel, was possessed by an evil spirit that made him feel threatened by, and gave him the desire to kill David. Shortly before the battle against the Philistines, Saul had lost his trust in God and instead sought information about the outcome of the battle from a spirit of the dead through a fortune teller (1 Chron 10:13). Salvatorino apparently identifies these spirits with Astaroth, a demon known from occult mythology and prince of hell, occasionally associated with the cult of Astarte known from the Books of Samuel. The biblical passages cited in the notes are erroneous: it is not the Books of Kings that are meant ("1.Reg.9.2" and "2.Reg.31"), but the Books of Samuel, which provide information about the anointing of Saul as king (1 Sam 9:2) and about his end (1 Sam 31). The latter chapter describes Saul's suicide: his guilt (v. 12) probably consists in his suicide in view of the imminent defeat of the Israelites by the Philistines, which a medium had predicted to him (1 Sam 28:3–25). This implicitly establishes a connection with Daniel: for unlike the prophet, Saul no longer has any trust in God – and conversely, God has also let Saul fall from grace, according to 1 Sam 18 – and cannot hope for divine revelation like that given to Daniel. After Saul's death, his "spoglie" (v. 12) are laid down in the temple of Astarte (1 Sam 31:10): Salvatorino thus translates Astarte as Astaroth.

The last verse refers in the marginal note to "Eccl.18.2": "and he [the Lord] alone is just. And there is no other besides him" (Sir 18.2). Obviously, there is no literal reference to the sonnet text, so the Bible does not serve here as a source of evidence for a paraphrase or summary of the divine word. The reference to Jesus Sirach must serve another purpose, which could be to point the reader to a superior religious truth, namely, the justice and uniqueness of God. In general, the second contrafacture departs significantly from the Petrarchan original, which, again, is typical of all contrafactures by Salvatorino.

As already pointed out, the contrafactures written by Stefano Colonna are meant to be responses that Laura gives to the original Petrarchan sonnets in order to correct his point of view:

#### Stefano Colonna, I sonetti VI

Si travagliato, Tranquill'e lieto si fu quel disio, C'hebbi già di seguir (in fuga volta Da le reti del mondo, e d'amor tolta) Chi à se mi chiama, e tempra il corso mio. Che se dal camin torto al diritto invio Il senso, che pe'l meglio il peggio ascolta, Non è, quando lo sprono, e gli do volta Qual era già nel primo error restio. Anzi humilmente il fieno [sic] in se raccoglie Ragion sbandita, e in balia di lui Al supremo suo bene lo trasporta. Onde si radi, e vaghi fior si coglie (Merce del ciel, non già virtù d'altrui) Che'l corpo serba, e l'anima conforta.

In this sonnet, Laura explains why, according to Petrarch, she "[i]n fuga è volta" (v. 2): she wanted to free herself from the "nets of the world and of love" (v. 3) so that her "desire remained calm and content" (v. 1) when she follows the one who "calls her to him and softens her gait" (v. 4). Unlike Petrarch's lyrical subject, Laura is able to call her senses to the right path (v. 5) by applying the metaphorical spurs which Petrarch's speaker is denied (v. 7 "non mi vale spronarlo"). Laura, moreover, does not recall her desire, as Petrarch does, nor it is love that resists her, but "il senso". The mind, the "ragion" (v. 10), is also able to take the reins – "il fieno" is surely a misprint instead of "il freno" (v. 9) – and can lead him (v. 11 "lo", probably meaning "il senso") to the highest good, i.e., to God. In heaven, the lyrical subject can then "pick flowers" (v. 12), i.e., receive the bliss of God. Finally, the sonnet emphasises that all this is an act of God's grace (v. 13 "merce del ciel") and not a merit of one's own works ("non già virtù d'altrui"). Colonna's contrafacture smooths out all the conflicts of the Petrarchan original: his Laura encounters no obstacles in her turning to God via the right path.

Some similarities can be observed in the contrafactures considered here. Petrarch's "desio" always remains untouched as a formulation, while only the objects of desire shift: what they have in common, however, is sinfulness. Whereas in Petrarch's sonnet this sinfulness is the carnal desire for Laura, in Salvatorino's riscritture it is first the vanity of the world in general and then, in his second contrafacture, the striving for honour. In Malipiero and Salvatorino's contrafactures, the "desio" is preserved in a negative meaning, while in Colonna's it becomes a desire for God in a positive sense (as in mystical poetry). In Malipiero and Salvatorino, the image of the tree is preserved in different ways: Malipiero metonymically transforms it into the wood of the Cross. Yet Salvatorino symbolises the Cross as a tree (first version) and then connects it with the fable of Jathom from the Book of Judges (second version), building a bridge to the crown of thorns and thus back to the Passion of Christ. This reference to the crown of thorns then gives Salvatorino another reason to make a reference to the crown of the Chaldeans.

#### 2.2.8 Conclusions

The spiritual counterfactuals of Petrarch's Canzoniere can be described as anticlassical in that they can only partially accept Petrarch as a model of poetry: while trying to preserve the linguistic level of the verba, they nevertheless correct the content level of the res. The contrafactures thereby maintain a paradoxical relationship to the original text: sometimes they try to replace the original, as Malipiero and Salvatorino do; and sometimes they respond to the original texts in a way that actually preserves the original poems, as Colonna does. Although Malipiero also mentions alternative models – first and foremost the Bible, but also Dante – he does not go so far as to make an alternative classicism out of these sources. Petrarch remains the point of reference. The contrafactures were ridiculed in their time – by Cinzio and Franco, for example – but it can be assumed that a large part of the readers took the contrafactures to be serious literature, as evidenced by new editions, imitators such as Salvatorino, anthologies as the Libro primo delle rime spirituali, and quotations in Aquilano's sermon books.

### Florian Mehltretter (with Sascha Resch, Giulia Lombardi, Matteo Cazzato)

## 3 Alternative Classicism

Dante as a Counter Model in Italian Renaissance Literature

The following pages will present aspects of the critical and productive reception of Dante in the sixteenth century as acts of deviation from dominant classicist allegiances such as Petrarchism (especially Bembism), the Horatian and rhetorical tradition of stylistic unity and, later, Aristotelian Poetics and its reception. This deviation can, but need not necessarily take on a directly opposing form, however, in all cases it will be an alternative choice of model, hence the term 'alternative classicism.'

The reception of Dante's work, and of the Commedia especially, in Italian Renaissance literature has been extensively studied, and in many of the explorations of this rich and complex field, the question of whether or not Dante was regarded as a possible model author by poets and literary theorists of the sixteenth century is touched upon.<sup>1</sup> This question is, however, rarely developed systematically with an eye on examining Dante's role as an alternative model or a counter-model.

In three steps, this will be attempted here: in the first section, the main arguments of the theoretical debate on Dante are briefly redrawn. The second section analyses some examples of writing modelled on Dante's works. The third part examines more closely two ways of viewing Dante as different from the mainstream, both of which emerged throughout the course of the century and became prominent towards its end: Dante as a 'phantastic' author on the one hand and, on the other, new manners of appreciating Dante's poetic 'harshness', which can be found in literary theory, poetic practice, the fine arts and music.

Of fundamental importance: Barbi 1975 [1890], Rossi 1930, Hathaway 1962, Weinberg 1961, Dionisotti 1965, Mazzacurati 1967, Vallone 1969, Mazzacurati 1977, Parker 1993, Gilson 2005, Gilson 2018 and the anthology edited by Caesar 1989, especially 250–259.

Note: Each of the persons named contributed to the research and wrote a chapter of his/her own. Any credit for these chapters should go to them, any errors are mine, as I revised the texts. F.M.

### 3.1 Alternative Classic or Outcast? The Theoretical Debate on Dante

The debate surrounding Dante's status as a classical author and on the nature and value of his poetry and poetics is, of course, one of the great theoretical discussions of the sixteenth century and has been explored by critics and historians of literature since the 1890s. It will be summarized briefly here, with a focus on the question of whether or not Dante could be viewed as a model for good writing. As indicated above, this chapter will stop short of the final stage of this debate, as this produced some remarkable innovations, which merit a chapter of their own (see chap. 3.3).

#### 3.1.1 Canonizing Petrarch, Ostracizing Dante: From Leonardo Bruni to Pietro Bembo

In the fourteenth century, a considerable number of commentaries and manuscripts with glosses of Dante's Commedia were produced, and the poem was studied and analysed in universities and public places. In the first three decades after the poet's death, many commentators treated the sacro poema as a canonized and authoritative literary work, partly in an attempt to hide the fact that they were really defending a highly controversial text against severe criticism with regard to its politics and philosophy (Parker 1993, 29–33).

This situation changed in the fifteenth century when Dante was generally accepted to be one of the greats and commentaries tended to present his work according to the needs and ideologies of the audience they were written for. This is evident in the politically motivated fight before and after Francesco Filelfo's lecture on Dante as a defender of republican liberties against tyrants in Florence in 1431, culminating in a knife attack on Filelfo by the Mediceans in 1433. Nearly half a century later, in 1481, Cristoforo Landino's commented edition attempted to reclaim the Comedy for purposes relating to Medici cultural politics, Florentine Neoplatonism and the affirmation of Tuscan linguistic and political hegemony (Parker 1993, 53–57, 89 and 94).2 This feat was performed, amongst other things, by superimposing the biographical fact of Dante's exile on the linguistic 'foreignness' of previous print editions and commentaries:

In 1478, Poliziano's Commentarium on the Pazzi conspiracy uses Dante's Inferno for Medicean politics by putting the Pazzi in hell. See Föcking 2019a.

Questo solo affermo, havere liberato el nostro cittadino dalla barbarie di molti externi idiomi, ne' quali da' comentatori era stato corropto; et al presente chosí puro et semplice è paruto mio officio apresentarlo ad voi illustrissimi signor nostri, accioché per le mani di quel magistrato, el quale è sommo nella fiorentina rep., sia dopo lungo exilio restituito nella sua patria, et riconosciuto né Romagnuolo essere né Lombardo, né degli idiomi di quegli che l'hanno comentato, ma mero fiorentino. La quale lingua quanto tutte l'altre italiche avanzi manifesto testimonio ne sia, che nessuno nel quale apparisca o ingegno o doctrina, né versi scripse mai né prosa, che non si sforzassi usare el fiorentino idioma (Landino 1481, 1r.–1v. = Landino 2001, 1, 221).

The performative force of the new Florentine annotated edition is supposed to bring the exiled poet home to Florence and thus to heal the rift between him and his city. Landino's commentary generally extols the virtues of Medicean culture, and Dante becomes its most prized asset (Lentzen 1985, Gilson 2005, especially 164–168).

In Filelfo's 1431 lecture, however, there exists an early trace of a different strand of Dante criticism, one which went on to become prominent in humanist circles. Filelfo reported that certain "ignorantissimi" were of the opinion that the Commedia was read predominantly by cobblers and bakers, in other words that its vernacular and possibly humble language rendered it too popular and thus unworthy of serious attention by intellectuals (Filelfo 1901, 23). An early trace of this tradition can be found in Franco Sacchetti's Trecentonovelle (CIX), written during the final years of the fourteenth century, in which a fictional 'Dante' protests against the idea of leaving his works to simple artisans (Föcking 2019a, 40–41). The most prominent example of this point of view was Leonardo Bruni's statement in his Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, which had been in circulation in manuscript form since the beginning of the fifteenth century, according to which Dante should be left to "lanariis, pistoribus atque eiusmodi turbae" (to wool workers, bakers and suchlike) and, in fact, be removed from the "concilio litterarum" altogether (Bruni 1952, 70). A positive version of this tale also existed in sixteenth century Florence, one describing a Dante who is as important to everday life as bread and wine (Barbi 1975, 260).

The main difference between these two versions can be grasped in the expression concilium litterarum in the quotation from Bruni above: at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Dante reigns supreme in environments characterized by the oral reception of poetry, but in the 'councils of men of letters' rather than of spoken words, his position is more contested. Early examples of a more critical attitude on the side of the litterati are to be found in statements by Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, who introduce a systematic opposition between Dante's rich and profound content matter and his rough and harsh style (Gilson 2018, 17). The grammarian Giovan Francesco Fortunio, while consistently treating Dante as a model Tuscan, frequently criticizes Dante's liberties, as well as any errors made in his texts, in his Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua of 1516 (Mehltretter 2010, 39).

This critical attitude is especially pronounced in writings by the Venetian intellectual Pietro Bembo, in whose dialogue Prose della volgar lingua poetic form reigns supreme – a poetic form conceived of in terms of the written word and its elitist tradition.

For Bembo, the existence of written poetry becomes the criterion for what can truly be called a language: "Non si può dire che sia veramente lingua alcuna favella che non ha scrittore", as one of the characters of the dialogue, Giuliano de' Medici, puts it (Bembo 1989, 110).3 It is true – and even of fundamental importance – that Bembo's approach is in a way phonocentric, as much of the discussion in the Prose relates to the sound of language and of poetry, but it is at the same time graphocentric (Robert 2007) in that this sound is conceived of as a kind of 'written sound', painstakingly elaborated upon by generations of writers over centuries of written tradition. This is also borne out by Bembo's presentation of Petrarch's poetry (which Bembo had edited based on authoritative manuscripts) in the famous 1501 portable Aldine edition of classical authors: it lets the text's typography shine on a page unencumbered by annotations, rendered auratic by a new font (later known as Italic), whilst at the same time structured by diacritic signs that allow a smoothly flowing declamation of its beautiful sounds (Mehltretter 2009, 146 and 2010, 41).

As is well known, Bembo opts for a vernacular Ciceronianism and therefore posits Petrarch as the sole model for vernacular poetry, as the latter epitomizes the balance of suavitas and gravitas, which is the essence of Ciceronian elegance (Regn 2006, 182 and 2020, 142–154). It is precisely this elegant balance that Dante, according to Bembo, fails to produce. Dante rarely, if ever, achieves the painstakingly elaborate and evenly maintained 'written sound' that Bembo seems to be looking for, as his poem is thought to contain a heterogeneous mixture of ugly, harsh or pedantic forms. To be sure, Bembo prepared Dante's text as well as Petrarch's for the ottavino da mano edition by Aldus Manutius and applied the same philological care to this task. But the very title he chose for the book edition, Le terze rime di Dante, suggests a collection of heterogeneous materials rather than a unified work (as well as assuming a critical distance

For a discussion of the existence of 'two or three crowns' and the debate over Dante versus Petrarch, see Jossa 2011. For a critical appraisal of Bembo's Prose see Mazzacurati 1967, Dionisotti 1968, Sabbatino 1995, Kablitz 1999, as well as various articles in Morgana/Piotti/Prada 2000, Dionisotti 2002, Mehltretter 2009, 126–160, Mehltretter 2010, Gilson 2018, 46–54.

from medieval ideas of what a comedy might be). Bembo in his literary practice did make occasional use of Dantean elements and techniques (Marx 1998, Accardi 2012), but his theory all but excludes them.

Bembo's criticisms will be further discussed and elaborated upon below (3.1.4.2.). As will be seen, they by no means remained uncontested, but it needs to be stressed that Bembo's position was very influential in intellectual circles, and he was followed by, amongst others, Tomitano, Della Casa and Ruscelli.

#### 3.1.2 The Ambiguities of Savonarola and the Piagnoni

In Florence, Dante was at the centre of Medici cultural politics. When the Medici were overthrown and Savonarola's theocratic republic took over, times were difficult for poetry and the arts, as the famous preacher condemned anything vain, pagan or sensual. For Savonarola just as for Thomas Aquinas, literature was the lowest form of knowledge or art (Girardi 1952, 419). Even though it could have a positive effect if it presented moral examples, in Savonarola's opinion its sensual components were to be avoided at all costs, especially by young people (Savonarola 1982, 266). In the famous bonfire of the vanities of 1497, pagan books, as well as Petrarch's and Boccaccio's works, were burnt, but there is doubt as to whether Dante's Commedia or his Monarchia were among the 'victims' (Weinstein 2011, 218; Schnitzer 1901).

Savonarola's followers, however, the so-called Piagnoni (or 'lamenters' of their sins), were more interested in literature and especially in Dante. Some of them took him up as a model for their own writing; we will discuss the case of Fra Benedetto da Firenze below (in 3.2.2.1).

Girolamo Benivieni, an intellectual at the Medici court and a follower of Savonarola's for some time (Ott 2018), was active both as a poet and a Dante scholar; in 1506 he was responsible for an important edition of the Commedia.

In 1500, after Savonarola's fall and execution, Benivieni published a collection of 100 of his poems with his own annotations, Commento di Hieronymo Benivieni sopra a più sue canzone et sonetti dello Amore et della Belleza Divina. The genre of this work harks back to Dante's Vita Nova, Convivio, and, most of all, to Lorenzo de' Medici's Neoplatonist Comento sopra alcuni dei suoi sonetti, but the number of poems chosen, 100, clearly alludes to the 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy. Moreover, the commentary is divided into three parts, just as Dante's epic is, and many details allude to Dante (Roush 2002). On the other hand, the motif of repentance, which is central to the iter of the lyrical subject, seems to echo the way in which it is used in Petrarch's Canzoniere. In fact, many of the poems hail from an earlier period in Benivieni's life, one during which he was interested both in Petrarch and Florentine Neoplatonism. Huss 2008 showed how Benivieni transformed these Petrarchist and Ficinian materials into a religious discourse influenced by Savonarola and his followers by changing parts of the poetic text and adding comments to that effect in the paratext. The final result of this transformation is, however, a kind of self-cancellation of the poetic writing: Benivieni's commentary condemns his own literary act of lyrically addressing God as presumptuous and arrogant (Huss 2008, 257). The ultimate conclusion to this would be to condemn Dante's Comedy on the same grounds, but Benivieni stops short of this. On the contrary, six years later he penned a new edition.

Benivieni's 1506 edition of the Comedy is a direct answer to Bembo's Aldine of 1502 (imitating its layout and italic typeface), but, as Roush 2002 shows, not finding many arguments to counter Bembo's excellent philological work, it shifts to ideology and performativity: Benivieni adds a "Cantico [. . .] in laude dello excellentissimo Poeta Dante Alighieri" in terza rima to the paratextual apparatus, in which he proclaims himself to be a "poetic descendant of Dante" (Roush 2002, 53), making the great Trecento poet confer upon him the status of authorized editor and commentator. This is very much in line with Dante's own performative techniques of self-authorization (Nelting 2014 and 2015).

Benivieni's Dante speaks directly to Florentine readers of the early sixteenth century, who find themselves in the complex political landscape of the post-Savonarolian republic. The capitolo, which is full of near-quotations and allusions to the Commedia, stages an encounter between Benivieni and Dante's ghost and seeks to reconcile a Neoplatonist reading of the Comedy (in the fashion of Landino) with the anti-papal Christian concerns dear to the Piagnoni. This latter position is particularly strong in 'Dante's' final prophecy to Benivieni at the end of the "Cantica", in which he takes up Beatrice's saying in Purgatorio XXXIII, 34–35: "Sappi che'l vaso che il serpente ruppe / fu e non è" (Alighieri 2007, II, 967), an image that can be read as a denial of the very existence of the Roman Church as a meaningful political institution (Mehltretter 2005, 137), and exhorts the city of Florence to direct its course towards God (Roush 2002, 62). Dante is presented "as a kind of Savonarolan prophet utilizing Florence in a message of renovation" (Gilson 2018, 41).

Benivieni's edition is important with regard to the canonization of Dante, and his "Cantico" is surely an example of a text based on the model of the Comedy, but its form of imitation is more of a pastiche than an act of creative appropriation.

#### 3.1.3 The Dante Apologists

#### 3.1.3.1 Two, Three or Numerous Fountains? Liburnio, Castiglione, Trissino, Folengo

In 1526, one year after Bembo's Prose, Niccolò Liburnio published a kind of primer for aspiring poets of the kind soon to become very popular, especially in the field of Petrarchism, the tavole of recommended expressions and procedures (Mehltretter 2009, 160–165). His chosen title, Le tre fontane, can be read as a direct contradiction of Bembo's 'two fountains' of Tuscan elegance, Petrarch and Boccaccio. For Liburnio, Dante must be included as a third fountain, and he incorporates a defence of Dante into the end of his book. This implies that Bembo's radical ideal of homogeneousness is not generally shared by his contemporaries, it suggests at least an option of stylistic plurality.

As in the early sixteenth century the theory of poetry is almost always bound up with that of language, this constellation links with the vexed questione della lingua, discussion of which is particularly heated in the 1520s. As is generally known, Castiglione (at least in theory, if less in the practice of writing) and Trissino opposed Bembo's proposal of Petrarch's Trecento literary Tuscan as the sole model and advocated, instead, a mixed lingua cortigiana similar to Dante's own ideas in De vulgari eloquentia (discovered and translated, incidentally, by Trissino). This means that Dante is involved in the questione in two ways: not only is the question of his inclusion in, or exclusion from, the canon of model authors at stake, but the fate of his own concept of an eclectic literary language as well – and it is important to bear in mind that the very eclecticism of Dante's style and language is one of the reasons that Bembo deauthorized Dante. This is, then, a quarrel over plurality versus unity.

In 1527 Teofilo Folengo published a sequence of three silvae, Il Chaos del Triperuno, which stages a "mistilinguismo programmatico" (Daniele 2013, 82) within a poetic and sometimes cryptic intellectual autobiography of the author. Triperuno, a trinitarian figure of the authorial self, bears the vestigia trinitatis that make him a created being, but at the same time, he incarnates three linguistic and stylistic options under the heteronyms of Merlino (the champion of Folengo's famous Maccaronean, which is in itself a threefold amalgamation of Latin, Tuscan and Mantovano), Limerno (an anagram of Merlino; his style can be described as a half-hearted and, in part, even ironic adaption of Trecento Tuscan) and Fùlica (characterised by a more cumbersome and captious theological register). These three are fountains "oltra le tre del mio Liburno" (Folengo 1977, I, 183), that is: beyond the Tre fontane, Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, espoused by Niccolò Liburnio and perhaps even beyond the personal genius of Teofilo Folengo himself, to which the form liburno (rather than Liburnio), 'speedy vessel', might allude (Mehltretter 2010, 15).

The unity Folengo nevertheless aspires to is not of a linguistic or stylistic order: it is guaranteed by the figure of Christ and hence not only a synthesis of unity and Trinity, but, more importantly, a spiritual, religious unity beyond the reach of human cultural politics or poetic norms. It can therefore be mentioned in an unashamedly 'pluralistic' stanza, which begins with Petrarch and Dante, and ends with a reference to Ariosto:

Vedrò, se'l debil filo non si taglia nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, quel raggio, ch'ora il senso m'abbarbaglia, con vista più vivace e più spedita. [. . .] di Lodovigo attendo il stile e l'arte. (Folengo 1977, I, 381)<sup>4</sup>

#### 3.1.3.2 Mere Apology

In the North, Bembo's influence remained strong, even though followers of the Cardinal such as Trifone Gabriele moved towards a more independent and cautiously positive assessment of Dante's style (Gilson 2018, 56–59). Dante apologists, especially in Tuscany, addressed two topics in particular: the claim that Dante was 'obscure' was countered by ever-more detailed commentaries, which sought to elucidate the more difficult passages (Gilson 2018, 97), whereas stylistic critique was often countered by attempts to show that Dante's style was not so far away from Petrarch's elegance after all. It is only later that Dante was credited in any detail with a different, more individual kind of writing, which could then become a counter model – as opposed to the earlier attempts to refute the Bembist critique of Dante, which are more apologetic in nature.

Two main arguments were proffered by the apologists of Dante's style: the first, an extenuating argument, explains away the rougher expressions and sounds of the Commedia by highlighting the early stage of development of the language in Dante's time. In relation to this, his writing is shown to be remarkably refined, as pointed out, amongst many others, by Giovan Battista Gelli (Weinberg 1961, II, 826). A more philologically profound version of this argument

The first verse alludes to Petrarch's canzone 37 "Sì è debile il filo" (Petrarca 2004a, 198), the second to the very first verse of Dante's Commedia, the last to Ludovico Ariosto.

was put forward by Vincenzo Borghini: He tried to show how stylistic criticisms of Dante failed to take into account the historical norms of Trecento Tuscan, which, according to Borghini, Dante did adhere to (Gilson 2018, 129).

The second of these main arguments is simply a flat-out contradiction of Bembo's verdict, usually on the grounds of a completely contrary reading experience. Thus, Gelli claims that Dante writes "leggiadramente", using a term that Bembo reserves for Petrarch (Gelli 1551, 146; Gilson 2018, 101). In his lectures at the Florentine Academy, Gelli often recurs to Petrarch to elucidate points in Dante, and vice versa. In this way "Gelli aims to undermine Pietro Bembo's criticism of the Comedy's imperfect language as well as his merely stylistic approach to Petrarch" (Pich 2015, 171). A more specifically Florentine form of argumentation will be described in the next paragraph, and it relates to Medici cultural politics.

#### 3.1.3.3 Tuscan Cultural Hegemonism and Purità: Gelli and the Florentines

When the Medici returned to power, much of their earlier cultural politics were once again taken up, including the cultivation of Dante. After 1525, the date of publication of Bembo's Prose, when Petrarch and Petrarchism was very much en vogue, in particular in the north of Italy, embracing Dante became something that could be used to underline a specifically Florentine literary profile. It is true that Dante and Petrarch were both of Tuscan origin (and, in their different ways, exiles), but the logic of competition with the north rendered Dante especially useful to the Florentines. It is therefore not surprising that the specifically Florentine diatopic features of Dante's language as well as his dottrina, which seemed of so little interest to the Bembists but was central to Landino's Neoplatonist interpretation of the Comedy, remained the principal points of discussion on Dante in Florence in the new century.

In fact, the weekly lectures by members of the Florentine Academy on Dante and Petrarch instituted by Cosimo de' Medici in 1541, and especially those by Benedetto Varchi and Giovan Battista Gelli, focussed strongly on this latter point, turning both authors into something akin to poet-philosophers. Gelli tries to show how Dante "brings together artistry and learning" (Gilson 2018, 146).

Apart from reclaiming Petrarch from the northerners (Gilson 2018, 98) and illustrating difficult passages from Dante's Comedy, this unified treatment of the two Tuscan masters destroys the distinction between Petrarch the stylist and Dante the inelegant philosopher, which is fundamental to the Bembist view. A similar, complementary effect is created, incidentally, by Giovanni Andrea Gesualdo's commentary on Petrarch dating from 1533 with its strong emphasis on philosophical doctrine (Mehltretter 2009, 193). Lattanzio Benucci puts the two Tuscan poets on the same footing in every respect (Vallone 1969, 130).

Giovan Battista Gelli is of particular importance in the context of the Accademia Fiorentina. He tries to refute Trissino's claim that the De vulgari eloquentia is an authentic work by Dante, not least because Dante's championing of a mixed courtly language in this tract would threaten Florentine claims to linguistic supremacy (Gilson 2018, 100).

One of the main arguments put forward by members of the Accademia is the appropriateness of Dante's language for the expression of his chosen ideas (Gelli 1551, 146). In accordance with an emerging concept which will later become important for the work of the Accademia della Crusca, Vincenzo Borghini praises the 'naturalness' and 'purity' of Dante's Florentine (Borghini 2009, 61–62). In this view, the language used by Dante is in itself pure for the very reason of being Florentine rather than mixed. The criterion for purity thus shifts from conformity with an idea of elegance extracted from the textual tradition, as in Bembo, to conformity with living linguistic usage.

#### 3.1.4 Theoretical Aspects of the Dante Debate

The above outline of the debate on Dante contains many arguments that are of a general, a pragmatic or an apologetic nature. There are, however, a few more specifically theoretical aspects which will be briefly redrawn in the following paragraphs.

#### 3.1.4.1 The Genre of the Commedia

The title of the Commedia, together with its narrative structure, provoked doubts as to its genre and poetics throughout the sixteenth century. Some readers took the title as a genre description and linked it to the plot structure of a comedy. An example is Girolamo Zoppio (1583, 65), for whom, similarly to the explanation in the Epistle to Cangrande, "la fine, et la resolutione d'una favola in giocondità, et contentezza" marked the text out as a 'comical' one, though he also considers the option of likening it to the philosophical dialogues of antiquity (Zoppio 1583, 10–11; Alighieri 1993).

Others based their classification more on the narrative mode of the text and classed it as an epic – some such as Gelli (see below 3.1.4.4) even went so far as to label it as an epic in the Aristotelian sense. But, at the same time, Gelli identified passages within the text that were similar to some within Greek comedy (Gilson 2018, 152), thus justifying its title and so drawing the conclusion that it was a heroic poem, with satirical elements mixed in (Gelli 1887, II, 294), for which the criteria of Aristotelian poetics did not really apply. Pietro Bembo, in the title of his 1502 edition for Aldus Manutius, opted out of this discussion altogether by calling the work Le terze rime di Dante, a generic plural that put metrical structure at the centre and, by the plural form, suggested more of a collection than a unified work (Alighieri 1502).

#### 3.1.4.2 Aptum and Style

It is characteristic of Bembo's aestheticist attitude that his explanation for what he believed to be Dante's stylistic failure was based upon his view that the philosopher and poet had made the wrong choice with regard to the relationship between words and things; in a famous passage of the Prose, he states:

Ma se dire il vero si dee tra noi, che non so quello che io mi facessi fuor di qui, quanto sarebbe stato piú lodevole che egli di meno alta e di meno ampia materia posto si fosse a scrivere, e quella sempre nel suo mediocre stato avesse, scrivendo, contenuta, che non è stato, cosí larga e cosí magnifica pigliandola, lasciarsi cadere molto spesso a scrivere le bassissime e le vilissime cose; e quanto ancora sarebbe egli miglior poeta che non è, se altro che poeta parere agli uomini voluto non avesse nelle sue rime. Che mentre che egli di ciascuna delle sette arti e della filosofia e, oltre acciò, di tutte le cristiane cose maestro ha voluto mostrar d'essere nel suo poema, egli men sommo e meno perfetto è stato nella poesia. Con ciò sia cosa che affine di poter di qualunque cosa scrivere, che ad animo gli veniva, quantunque poco acconcia e malagevole a caper nel verso, egli molto spesso ora le latine voci, ora le straniere, che non sono state dalla Toscana ricevute, ora le vecchie del tutto e tralasciate, ora le non usate e rozze, ora le immonde e brutte, ora le durissime usando, e allo 'ncontro le pure e gentili alcuna volta mutando e guastando, e talora, senza alcuna scielta o regola, da sé formandone e fingendone, ha in maniera operato, che si può la sua Comedia giustamente rassomigliare ad un bello e spazioso campo di grano, che sia tutto d'avene e di logli e d'erbe sterili e dannose mescolato, o ad alcuna non potata vite al suo tempo, la quale si vede essere poscia la state sí di foglie e di pampini e di viticci ripiena, che se ne offendono le belle uve. (Bembo 1989, II.20, 175–178)

It was because he happened to have chosen such diverse and difficult topics that Dante was tempted to use such an abundance of inelegant words. Had he chosen content appropriate to his stylistic possibilities, he would have been a better poet. Form precedes subject matter in Bembo's criticism of Dante, and the traditional hierarchy of matter and style is thus reversed. In light of this argument, it is not surprising that Bembo, though a cardinal within the Roman Church, chose the love lyric as the dominant genre for his own literary production; the choice of Petrarch's style as the most elegant seemed to entail having to write about the same subject matter as the bard of the Sorgue (Mehltretter 2009, 159).

In the sentences from the Prose quoted above, the contents of the Commedia are clearly of secondary importance. But Bembo's argumentation could also be read as simply distinguishing a poet of form (Petrarch) and a poet of dottrina (Dante), justifying both possibilities. Even though Bembo and the Bembists preferred form over content, subsequent writings on Petrarch (like Gesualdo's 1533 commentary) tried to show that Petrarch mastered both, and subsequent Dante apologists likewise tried to demonstrate that Dante's writing possessed both doctrine and beauty.

As pointed out above in 3.1.3.1, some apologists simply contradicted Bembo's verdict of inelegance. Gelli insisted on the appropriateness of every single one of the various stylistic registers used for the wide variety of subject matter presented in the Comedy (Weinberg 1961, II, 827), and this, according to him, quite naturally resulted in a form of "decoro" that comprises "quando stile basso, quando mediocre, quando alto, quando dolce, quando aspro, quando facile e quando duro" (Gelli 1556, 38). It is important to note that the three levels of stylistic aptum here become seven due to the addition of four qualities – akin to the seven 'ideas' of Hermogenes' Perì heureseos or Trissino's sevenfold adaptation of it (see section 3.3.2.2 below, in which the special history of the term aspro with reference to Dante will be sketched). This sevenfold system is not only more 'pluralistic' than the tripartite gamut of rhetoric, it is also more flexible and less hierarchic, as it includes qualities such as dolce/aspro or duro. Gelli, moreover, stresses the force that even low words such as biscazza (criticized by Bembo) or merda (Gilson 2018, 165–167) can have.

Other stylistic arguments include an appreciation of Dante's ability for "vivid visualization" (Gilson 2018, 112), as in Giambullari's part of Lenzoni's Difesa della lingua fiorentina e di Dante. Here, the aptness of language is no longer a question of elegance, but, rather, of rhetorical effect, of enargeia: "ponendo altrui le cose dinanzi a gli occhi" (Lenzoni 1556, 46).

#### 3.1.4.3 Dante, Aristotelianism and the Great Debate in the Secondo Cinquecento

From an Aristotelian perspective, a major charge that can be brought against Dante's poem is its abundance of episodes. Against such views, Giovan Battista Gelli stresses that Dante gives us "una pura e sola narrazione" of the poet's spiritual journey and that the many characters he meets provide us only with illustrative favole and exemplary casi, which are, moreover, well-ordered within the general framework (Gelli 1887 I, 37), even though the criteria of Aristotelian poetics do not really apply to the Comedy (Gilson 2018, 167). Similarly, Alessandro Sardi calls Dante a perfect poet, as he narrates a single true and illustrious action amplified by secondary "narrationi favolose" (Sardi 1586, 114).

Giambullari, in his part of Lenzoni's Difesa della lingua fiorentina e di Dante, states in a somewhat general manner that Dante's Commedia is to be regarded as an heroic epic of the type extolled by Aristotle (Lenzoni 1556, 46). Utilising a topical comparison popular since Boccaccio's time and developed via Trissino and Gelli, Lenzoni places Dante above all other poets except perhaps Homer and Virgil (Lenzoni 1556, 40; Colombo 2007). Benedetto Varchi, in his roughly contemporary, posthumously published dialogue, L'Ercolano, echoes this comparison, which will be resurrected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (from Vico 1852, 41–43 onward), but he goes one step further and puts the Tuscan above the Greek poet. (Varchi 1995, II, 844–845; 974; Vallone 1969, 150–167).

In 1572, the Discorso di M. Ridolfo Castravilla, argues the opposite and condemns Dante, in particular with regard to some of the central tenets of Aristotelian poetics, thus igniting the great Dante debate of the end of the century. Antonio degli Albizzi and Filippo Sassetti in particular countered Castravilla's position with more thorough readings of Aristotle's text (Weinberg 1961, II, 842–847; Gilson 2018, 138). Important aspects of Jacopo Mazzoni's long and complex defence of Dante against Castravilla's criticisms will be discussed in chapter 3.3.1 below.

### 3.2 Imitatio Dantis: Dante as an Alternative Model

The actual practice of Imitatio Dantis in the fifteenth century reacts to some of the problems and potentials sketched out in chapter 1, but in many cases the aspects of Dante's writing that are taken up belong to other categories, such as metric, a certain conception of the didactic and/or religious epic, or single concepts, images and formulations.

#### 3.2.1 Dante within the Plural Field of Terzina Writing; Machiavelli (Sascha Resch)

One way of choosing Dante as a model is to adopt the typical metric form of the Comedy, the terza rima. This form can mark a more extensive imitation of Dante in a given work, or it can be used independently of such a choice of model, especially since there is also a strand of this tradition – relating to terzina poetry written by Boccaccio and Petrarch and to the genre of the capitolo – that departs from Dante's prototype in many respects.5

#### 3.2.1.1 Forms and Practices of Terza Rima Writing

The terzina, which probably has its origins in the serventese, was coined by Dante as an epic stanza, but was not defined terminologically until some time after him (Vecchi Galli 2008, 44), initially primarily by the term terzetti. In the sixteenth century, the terzina was also used as a metrical form for the elegy and the eclogue.

Large-scale encyclopaedic poems with an allegorical component were one of the main fields of application of the terza rima, and in this genre a line of tradition continues from Dante's Commedia, Boccaccio's Amorosa visione and Petrarch's Trionfi into the Cinquecento. Important texts in the Trecento are Fazio degli Uberti's Dittamondo and Federico Frezzi's Quadriregio, in the Quattrocento Matteo Palmieri's Città di vita, and finally in the first half of the Cinquecento Giovanni Filoteo Achillini's 100-canto didactic poem Il Fedele.

An important metrical exception among these didactic poems is L'Acerba by Cecco d'Ascoli, which was written in the Trecento: Cecco openly deviates from Dante's model by, among other things, undermining the rhyming pattern used by Dante, combining as he does two tercets into six verses, which involves superimposing a twofold structure on Dante's tripartite system (Ferrilli 2016).

Another important field of application of the terza rima was within narrative historiography. One of the most influential historiographical terzina poems is probably Antonio Pucci's Centiloquio from the late Trecento. Equally significant within this tradition are Niccolò Machiavelli's Decennali dating from the beginning of the Cinquecento. Even though this type of terza rima poetry does have a connection to the Commedia and the Trionfi, in that the latter repeatedly integrate

These observations are based on Peirone 1990; Fubini 1962, 185–188; Bausi/Martelli 1993, 90; Beltrami 1993, 91.

historical elements, a considerable distance exists between true historiographical texts and the narrative poems written by Dante and Petrarch: while in the Commedia and the Trionfi, the historical elements are woven into the overall allegorical (or, from a modern point of view, even fictional) text, the historical narrative is clearly the dominant level of content in works such as the Centiloquio or the Decennali. Accordingly, when assessing this type of text, one must take a certain detachment and independence from the models into account.

Yet, in Machiavelli's case, historiographic terzina writing can take on a Dantesque hue when it comes to denouncing failure or baseness. Thus, in the Decennale Secondo, Machiavelli describes the effect of the truce between the Emperor Maximilian and the Republic of Venice in 1508 and, in particular, the cession by the Empire of the towns of Gorizia and Trieste to the Serenissima, which was to be followed by a treaty between the Emperor and France against Venice (Liege of Cambrai), in a Dantesque satirical style:

onde Massimïan far triegua volse, veggendo contra i suoi tanto contrasto, e le due terre d'accordo si tolse; le qual di poi si furono quel pasto, quel rio boccon, quel venenoso cibo, che di San Marco ha lo stomaco guasto (Decennale Secondo, 130–135, Machiavelli 2012a, 60)

The somewhat drastic metaphor of the cloying effects of the two cities gobbled up by the Venetians, and especially the combination of such a physical image with the more abstract metonymy for the Republic of Saint Mark's, reminds readers of Dante of passages like Purgatorio XVI, 129, in which the Roman Church is said to tumble into the mud by confounding two ways of governing itself and others (Alighieri 2007, 2, 486).

One of the most important lines of tradition of the terza rima is without a doubt the writing of so-called capitoli. This term, which appears in its Latin form in some early Commedia manuscripts and prints (such as Dante 1472) and consistently in Petrarch's Trionfi, is used in the period after Dante and Petrarch to refer to individual cantos or chapters that are not part of a larger epic poem. The prevalence and popularity of the capitolo is likely to have been largely due to its thematic openness.

The capitolo reached a first productive peak in the first half of the quattrocento; indicative of this is the strong presence of this rhyme scheme among the participants of Leon Battista Alberti's Certame coronario (Peirone 1990, 50–51).

The compass of content matter of capitolo poetry ranges from love to encomia, lamentation of the dead and religious themes to polemics and didactics and then on to impossibilia and finally (in the 1520s) to paradoxical praise in the Poesia Bernesca (Schulz-Buschhaus 1975; Schulz-Buschhaus 1993). Capitoli commenting on Dante's Commedia also existed (Peirone 1990, 68–73; 83–89). Due to this detachment from larger epic contexts and the pluralisation of the subject matter, it is problematic to associate capitolo poetry in principle and without further inspection with any given author's possible choice to imitate Dante.

In addition, the terzina was also used as an equivalent of certain metrical forms of classical antiquity. As early on as the first half of the quattrocento, Lorenzo Spirito Gualtieri translated the hexameters of the last five books of Ovid's Metamorphoses into vernacular tercets. In the second half of the quattrocento, more volgarizzamenti appeared; for example, Bernardo Pulci translated Virgil's Bucolica into the vernacular, using the form of the terza rima. Other examples are Bastiano Foresi's translation of Virgil's Georgica under the new title Ambitione, Battista Guarini's translation of Plautus' comedy Menaechmi, and Giorgio Sommariva's translations of the pseudo-homeric Batracomiomachia and Juvenal's satires.

This type of volgarizzamento not only ensured that the ancient models were updated in modern language and that the terza rima became the modern counterpart of the ancient elegiac distich (Beltrami 1993, 274; De Maldé 1996; Huss et al. 2012, 238–248), but also expanded the thematic and stylistic scope of the terzina once again. In the wake of the Bucolica translation, independent bucolic poems were written in terza rima, including Corinto and Apollo e Pan by Lorenzo de' Medici, as well as the Pastorale by Pietro Jacopo de Jennaro.

An even more productive and effective field of activity in the long term arose through the aforementioned translation of the Juvenalian satires by Sommariva (with a prehistory of terza rima satire around 1400). Subsequently, the terza rima advanced to become the leading rhyme scheme of this text genre, for example in poems written by Antonio Vinciguerra, Lorenzo de' Medici, Lodovico Ariosto and Luigi Alamanni (Galbiati 1987). Niccolò Machiavelli's Asino also shows strong satirical features in combination with an allegorical style, which some scholars have interpreted as a satire on Dante (Sasso 1997b) – a hypothesis that requires differentiation, however (Marietti 2011).

Finally, the revival of classical elegy in the vernacular also makes use of the terza rima. Theorists such as Vincenzo Calmeta attempted to distinguish systematically between elegiac terzine and the heroic ones of the capitolo as early on as the beginning of the century, but this was not ultimately successful, especially since the capitolo, as has been shown, is thematically and stylistically very variable (Calmeta 1959, 52; Huss et al. 2012, 246).

The comparative ease with which the tercet can be mastered made it a popular form even among occasional poets (Peirone 1990, 90), but it nevertheless retained a latent streak of the elitist or aristocratic because of its potential for incorporating intellectual debate or virtuoso play (Gorni 1993, 100). In Carlo Dionisotti's view, it is also linked through Dante to the idea of a pre-Medicean, 'ancient' Florence, which could explain Machiavelli's choice of the terzina for the Decennali (Dionisotti 1980, 252).

#### 3.2.1.2 The Stylistic Value and Status of the Terza Rima

Theoretical discussion of the terzina mostly relates to its suitability for epic poetry. Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio (1554, 95–96) states that he preferred it instead of the ottavarima as an epic metre. Antonio Sebastiano Minturno mentions it (under the term serventese) together with the ottavarima and blank verse as one of the three metres of heroic poetry (Minturno 1563, 263). Benedetto Varchi (1859, 717) expresses a similar opinion, while Giovan Giorgio Trissino prefers blank verse for his Italia liberata da' Goti. Francesco Patrizi is similarly sceptical about the terza rima in the heroic register. While he is willing to concede that Dante did indeed use the "terzetto" for a "materia grave", in general he considers the rhyme scheme less suitable for the heroic than for the elegiac (Patrizi 1557, unnumbered page). Similarly, Girolamo Ruscelli views the tercet as an elegiac rather than a heroic metre and even expresses doubts that Dante's Commedia can truly be called a heroic poem, since the author speaks in the first person throughout (Ruscelli 1558, 97–98).

Torquato Tasso has more practical reservations about the terza rima in the realm of the heroic. The three-line-stanzas are too short to accommodate the larger units of thought required for the heroic style – but precisely because this style is conceptually more expansive, it also requires a greater number of resting points than the chained tercets allow:

Il terzetto ha troppo stretto seno per rinchiudere le sentenze de l'eroico, il quale ha bisogno di maggior spazio per spiegare i concetti: ed oltre a ciò non ricerca una catena perpetua, né i riposi così lontani, come sono nel capitolo, ma, spiegando i suoi concetti in più largo e più ampio giro, spesso desidera dove acquetarsi (Tasso 1977, 2, 374).

Thus, on the one hand, the terzina can be read, with regard to its origin, as a sign referring to its actual founder Dante, but on the other hand, it is not bound to the genre tradition of the Commedia either in terms of content or at the level of genre and style. It can have an affirmative effect with regard to the classicist orientations of the Cinquecento if it appears as the equivalent of ancient forms such as the eclogue and the elegy, but it can also mark an alternative orientation in a form leaning towards that of Dante – but only if it appears in connection with other characteristics that reinforce this.

#### 3.2.1.3 Machiavelli's Asino

Machiavelli is well-known for his political writings, amongst them The Prince (De Principatipus) and the Discourses on Livy, to mention only the most famous ones. Rather unknown are, in contrast, his writings in terza rima: today we know of about eight such texts that Machiavelli wrote, the two Decennali, five so-called Capitoli and the longest of these texts, L'Asino.

L'Asino is, on the one hand, a free adaption of Apuleius' Metamorphoses, which, in its turn, recounts the story of a man named Lucius, who is transformed into a donkey and experiences several adventurous episodes. On the other hand, even at a first glance, L'Asino intensely recalls the model of Dante's Commedia.

The text is organized into eight capitoli, each of which is made up of approximately 130 verses (the longest one, capitolo ottavo, counts 151 verses, the shortest one, capitolo primo, 121 verses). Though the capitoli thus mirror the 'typical' length of Dantean canti, it is difficult to say whether the text had been planned to adopt the complete structure of Dante's Commedia: L'Asino is an unfinished work, interrupted after the capitolo ottavo. Although there is speculation about the reasons that led to the text being abandoned (Ferroni 1975, 345; Sasso 1997b, 119–121), there isn't much evidence to back up any of these hypotheses. Equally vague remains the date of composition. While most scholars tend to believe it dates from around 1517, when Machiavelli mentioned L'Asino in his letter to Lodovico Alamanni on 17th December 1517 (Machiavelli 1999, 357), there is also another hypothesis. One cannot exclude that the text was composed within two distinct periods: the first five capitoli could have been composed around 1512/13, while the last three might have been written later, presumably around 1517 (Benedetto 1926, 20–21, and Martelli 1990, 15; 21).

Unlike the Dantean model, L'Asino starts with an explicitly proemial capitolo which determines the programmatic orientation of the text and which is, in terms of content, not directly connected to the rest of the text. It includes an exemplary narrative of a young man, who suffers from a habit of running around without control. A medical practitioner seems to have cured the young man, but his habit of running around abruptly reappears as he sees Via Larga in Florence: "Non si puotè questo giovin tenere, / vedendo quella via dritta e spaziosa, / di non tornar ne l'antico piacere" (Asino, I, 76–78, Machiavelli 2012b, 143). The main message of this episode – which could be read from an autobiographic perspective (e.g. Sasso 1997b, 44–45) – seems to support the textual program of L'Asino: the narrator has stopped his<sup>6</sup> habit of jeering using cynical verbal attacks. But just as the young man of the episode couldn't abandon his habit completely, likewise the narrator's habit has reappeared, and he is going to once again make use of cynical criticisms due to the "tempo dispettoso e tristo" (Asino, I, 97, Machiavelli 2012b, 144). This way, it is made clear at the very beginning that L'Asino is going to place a strong emphasis on satire and the comic register, with ironic and often cynical nuances.

While the first capitolo has no direct connection to Dante's Commedia in terms of content, in the capitolo secondo one cannot overlook its Dantesque references. The protagonist finds himself at a gloomy location, which remarkably resembles the selva oscura of Inferno I:

[. . .] io mi trovai in un luogo aspro quanto mai si vide. Io non vi so ben dir com'io v'entrai, né so ben la cagion perch'io cascassi là, dove al tutto libertà lasciai (Asino, II, 20–24, Machiavelli 2012b, 147)

Like in Inferno I, a guiding character also appears in the capitolo secondo of L'Asino – we will call her scorta in order to avoid confusion with the guides in Dante's Commedia. The scorta is going to guide the protagonist through a seemingly transcendent world, a fact that directly refers to the poema sacro. But unlike Vergil or Beatrice, the scorta presents herself as a servant of Circe, the mythical magician: "Son al servizio suo [Circe] molte donzelle, / con le quai solo il suo regno governa, / e io sono una del numer di quelle" (Asino, II, 115–117, Machiavelli 2012b, 152).

In this way, the text enriches the basic setting of Dante's Commedia by using other well-known textual references, amongst them Homer's Odyssey or Vergil's Aeneid.

Another such textual reference is, as mentioned above, Apuleius' book of Metamorphoses. Alongside the general idea of a man being transformed into a donkey – which, in the fragment of L'Asino available to us today, is just announced, but never occurs – the sexual intercourse between the protagonist and his scorta also seems to point to the Apuleian hypotext, which gives clear

We use the masculine form as in L'Asino adjectives connected with the speaker's voice appear in masculine form, so it seems plausible to suppose the speaker's voice is a masculine one.

descriptions of Lucius and Photis' intimate relationship (e.g. II, 17, Apuleius 2008, 38–39). By combining the Dantean concept of the female guiding figure with the sexual aspect presumably inspired by Apuleius, L'Asino succeeds in provoking intense comic potential, including a parody of the spiritual nature of the love inspired by the guiding figure. Realization of this potential often verges on the obscene, but nevertheless remains in an allusive realm: "gustando il fin di tutte le dolcezze, / tutto prostrato sopra il dolce seno" (Asino, IV, 141–142, Machiavelli 2012b, 165). This way, obscenity is shifted towards an 'eye-twinkling' ironic kind of humour, a play with allusions.

After the capitolo quarto and its erotic intermezzo, the following capitolo quinto almost entirely consists of reflection set out in monologues: the protagonist expresses his thoughts while his scorta is temporarily absent. These reflections are centred on political theory, but they also contain general philosophical considerations. As the scorta reappears, in capitolo sesto, the protagonist is guided to a "dormitoro" (Asino, VI, 41, Machiavelli 2012b, 174), which, as the scorta explains, comprises several rooms, in each of which one kind of animal is located. These animals are former humans that have been transformed by Circe, in correspondence to the qualities or defects exhibited during their lifetime. For instance, "[s]'alcun di troppa furia e rabbia abonda, / tenendo vita rozza e vïolenta, / tra gli orsi sta ne la stanza seconda" (Asino, VI, 61–63, Machiavelli 2012b, 174). This correspondence of lifetime traits and 'destiny' when being transformed notably echoes the Dantean principle of contrappasso, which is fundamental especially in the Inferno. At the end of the capitolo sesto, the protagonist is led into a special chamber, in which the contrappasso system previously explained by the scorta is surprisingly undermined, as there are various animals without any such distinction.

The following lengthy exhibition of various other animals, which constitutes almost the entire capitolo settimo, seems to combine a Dantesque show of sinners' souls and a Trionfi-like configuration, in parts appearing virtually grotesque. At the end, protagonist and scorta arrive in front of a huge dirty pig. This pig will be the main speaker in the capitolo ottavo in which, at first, the protagonist politely addresses the pig and offers to transform him back into a human being. But the pig refuses and delivers a highly rhetorized argument, which aims to show that animals are superior to humankind. This monologue can be seen as a free adaption of the Plutarchian dialogue between Odysseus and Gryllos (Plutarch 2001 and, e.g., Sasso 1997a), additionally nourished with other ancient elements, especially ones from Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia (especially VII, (1), 1–5, Plinius 2002, 1–3 and Ferroni 1975, 343–344). Capitolo ottavo, as well as the text of L'Asino as we have it in hand, end with the final statement of the porcelotto:

E s'alcuno infra gli uomin' ti par divo, felice e lieto, non gli creder molto, che 'n questo fango piú felice vivo, dove senza pensier mi bagno e volto (Asino, VIII, 148–151, Machiavelli 2012b, 193)

Apart from the parallels in terms of structure and content detailed in the above analysis, there are plenty of other points of contact with Dante's Commedia: numerous adoptions of textual fragments and lexical borrowings; even on a stylistic level one can see recurring approximations to the poema sacro, such as similitudines or periphrastic expressions, even astronomic ones. Nevertheless, L'Asino is not a ré-écriture of Dante's Commedia. In fact, Dante's Commedia seems to be only one (even though perhaps the most important) of its intertexts, while other textual references, such as the cases already mentioned of Apuleius, Plutarch or Plinius, but also Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid, as well as Petrarch's Canzoniere, Pulci's Morgante or Ariost's Orlando furioso, play a similarly fundamental role in L'Asino as a whole.

Dante does serve as a model here, but the alternative afforded by it to, say, a possibly more Petrarchan style (as found in the Trionfi), belongs not to a programme of direct Dantism, but, rather, of a recreation of Dante's stylistic plurality in a new historical situation, with similarly satirical intent, but with a completely different ideological background.

#### 3.2.2 Sacred Epics (Florian Mehltretter)

As chapter 3.2.1 showed, the terzina form is very flexible with regard to genre and content, at least within a certain range. This also means that it is not necessarily a result of a Dantesque poetics. Such a poetics becomes, however, highly relevant wherever the terzina is linked to sacred subject matter, not least because it was, after all, the sixteenth century that coined the epithet Divine for the Comedy and thus identified the religious substance of Dante's poem as its crucial trait. In this situation, a sacred epic, especially in tercets, would almost certainly have been read as a work very close to the Dantean tradition.

#### 3.2.2.1 Fra Benedetto Luschino da Firenze: Cedrus Libani

Chapter 3.1.2 above introduced the Piagnoni or followers of Savonarola and their literary interests. One of them, the Dominican friar Benedetto Luschino, the son of a goldsmith and of little erudition (Vasoli 1989, 519), used the form of the terzina epic to recount the fall of Savonarola in 1498 and his own part in the events, under the Latin title Cedrus Libani. The only extant part, the first book of a work which remained unpublished and probably unfinished during its author's lifetime, was written in 1510 in prison (Luschino 1849, 59). This could be one of the 'popular' appropriations of the terza rima form alluded to in 3.2.1.1, but the religious subject matter and the overall epic form make a more specific reference to Dante more than likely.

The title alludes to the Lebanese cedar, a plant often mentioned in the Old Testament. The most prominent and relevant passage seems to be Psalm 91:13, "Justus ut palma florebit; sicut cedrus Libani multiplicabitur", which was used as a proper of the Mass and must therefore have been very present in the minds of monks like Benedetto or of his putative readers. Other passages often mention the height of the plant (Ecclesiasticus 24:17, Psalms 36:35, Isaias 2:13) or mention it as having been felled (Zacharias 11:12). A possible suggestion arising from this constellation could be that Savonarola was a just man who was felled, but whose justice will thrive on even after his passing.

The book can be divided into a first part, which relates the conversion of its author by Savonarola, and a second part, in which Savonarola's fall is recounted. The text stresses its truthfulness and autobiographical and historical reliability (Proemio, Luschino 1849, 60).

At the beginning, Fra Benedetto tells his readers of his ill-spent youth as a miniaturist and singer in late fifteenth-century Medici Florence, with its preoccupation for beauty and luxury. Before his conversion, he was immersed in this world of vanity, the corruption and godlessness of which he deplores and which reaches up even to the highest spheres of the Church and, indeed, to Pope Alexander VI himself. The authorial persona is part of this: "Così vivendo, in morte dimoravo" and: "l'alma mia, coll'altre, era smarrita" (Luschino 1849, 61). The path from perdition to light sketched out in the first capitoli coincides with the basic structure of Dante's Commedia, but of course, also with that of any other tale of conversion.

In this situation of darkness, God sends his servant "Ieronimo", that is, Savonarola, as a prophet (Luschino 1849, 62). The second capitolo condenses content matter from Savonarola's homilies into a powerful sequence of terzine, an apocryphal 'speech' by the famous preacher, which as such does not correspond to any known text from his pen. The prophet counsels the young man, and Benedetto duly joins the Dominican order.

The sixth capitolo is particularly interesting in that it describes a council of the demons of hell presided over by Lucifer. Seeing Savonarola's good works, Lucifer "latrava come rabido animale" (Luschino 1849, 77), a verse redolent of Dante's (in turn Ovidian) Hecuba, who "latrò sì come cane" in Inferno XXX, 20 (Alighieri 2007, 1, 889), but resolving the stylistic ambiguity of the passage from the Comedy in a decidedly low, grotesque register. With "orrende strida" the Devil calls his demons and begins a remarkable speech with the allocution "O spiriti perversi", in which he explains his role in the history of the fall of man. Like Dante's Lucifer, Luschino's is tied in hell, but much more than the inactive and taciturn Satan of the Commedia, he relies on sending out demons to seduce mankind. In spite of this remarkable difference, his speech in Luschino's text at times touches upon the harsh comical style of certain passages of Dante's Hell:

Ma da quel tempo in qua, voi altri ho messi Per tutto el mondo, o spiriti villani, A ciò di Cristo la fede estinguessi.

E voi, mendaci, brutti e sozzi cani, Estinta non avete la sua fede. L'un dice: Oggi farò. L'altro: Domani.

Or novamente sento che si crede, Dentr'a Fiorenza, al gran Savonarola; El qual in verbo Dei predice e vede.

Era (lasso!) Fiorenza nostra ascola, Piena di sodomie, usure e giuochi: Or, per vostra mal guardia, al Ciel ne vola. (Luschino 1849, 78)

The idea that Florence in particular might be a 'school' of diabolic misdeeds of all kinds reminds us of the introduction to Inferno XXVI. Lucifer ordains that the corrupt Church authorities be called upon to do away with the irksome prophet and condemn his doctrine. This implies that Savonarola's sentence in 1498 is a work of hell itself, and it is, as the editor of the text, Vincenzo Marchese (Luschino 1849, 59), points out, not by chance that the manuscript declares itself to have been written in 1510 under the new pontificate of the Savonarola-friendly Pope Julius II.

As is well known, public opinion turned against Savonarola and he was arrested (or compelled to give himself up to the authorities). In capitolo 8, this is treated in a mixed style of pathos and disdainful comedy that reminds the reader of Dante's style:

La plebaglia, pessima, tapina, Veniva drieto a quelli, saccheggiando La roba del convento a gran ruina.

E' figli del Profeta eran, cantando Le litanie, avanti al Sacramento, Di punto in punto el martirio espettando. (Luschino 1849, 83)

An important difference between Dante and Luschino can, however, be seen both here and in almost every other passage, in the limpid simplicity of the latter's style, close to oral usage and almost never posing a challenge to readers.

According to Fra Benedetto's version, a nobleman turned friar, Malatesta Sacromoro da Rimini, betrayed not only Savonarola, but also two of his followers, making him a threefold Judas, as the end of canto IX states:

Parte di Iuda furno tua pedate, E se pur Iuda un Cristo dette preso, Per te tre ne fur presi in dua giornate; Per te l'un dopo l'altro fu sospeso! (Luschino 1849, 87)

Whether or not this account is historically true, likening Malatesta to Judas as well as dwelling on the trinitarian number belongs to an underlying programme of depicting Savonarola as a perfect imitator Christi and, at the same time, a prophet; Savonarola is referred to as "il Profeta" throughout, and in capitolo 8, his capture is openly likened to that of Jesus (Luschino 1849, 84).

The eleventh and last capitolo summons up all the rhetorical devices Luschino's style could muster, but even so, the writing never attempts anything in the way of a 'difficult' or obscure style, as witnessed by the introduction of this chapter:

Silvestri faggi, et insensate piante, Alpestri monti, e caverne oscurissime, Comparite al gran foco in uno istante.

Menate vostre bestie ferocissime, Rapaci lupi e leon rugïenti, Serpenti, tigri e viper crudelissime. (Luschino 1849, 91)

The grammatical rhyme on -issime insists on the superlative, but is poetically rather weak. The simplicity of these verses could well be explained by the comparatively reduced literary education of the author (as he states in capitolo 4: "Scienzia alcuna e latin non avevo", Luschino 1849, 73), but as a singer he was surely familiar with vernacular verse. The reason could therefore just as well be a conscious choice of a simple, approachable style such as that found in the New Testament.

After Savonarola's fall, Fra Benedetto had to flee to Viterbo, probably because he had defended himself with some kind of weapon and killed one or several assailants, but then returned to Florence to defend his prophet's memory and doctrine. Once there, he was expelled from the congregation and confined to a dungeon within the monastery of San Marco, most likely upon orders of the then vicar general of the Congregation, his enemy Malatesta Sacromoro. The reason for this was alleged to be homicide (Marchese in Luschino 1849, 50–51), perhaps in the context of Fra Benedetto's defense of Savonarola during the above-mentioned fights (Vasoli 1989, 531). At any rate, at the end of the text, he states: "Mi dolgo di mie colpe" (Luschino 1849, 95).

The slightly whining ('piagnone'), mild and uncomplicated sermo piscatorum of this terza rima epic is not only very far removed from more elaborate forms of poetry, but, in most of the verses, also from the accommodation of Dante's harsh 'low style' to versified historiography as it can be found in some of Machiavelli's Decennali. One might say: Dantesque terzina can open up a space of alternative writing which, in the case of Fra Benedetto, does not necessarily have to be, in itself, Dantesque.

#### 3.2.2.2 Rewriting Dante: Francesco Gerini: Fiore di Verità; Tommaso Sardi: Anima peregrina

The subject of Savonarola inspired another epic in terza rima, unpublished during its author's lifetime and preserved in a single manuscript in the Bodleian Library (Oxford): Fiore di Verità, in fourteen capitoli, by Francesco di Giuliano di Piero di Gerino Gerini, composed around 1498 (Foligno 1926, 1). As opposed to Luschino's Cedrus Libani, Gerini's poem positions itself against Savonarola. It takes as its base the first ten cantos of Dante's Inferno and thus a text dear to Savonarola's followers. The Dantean pretext is used, however, less as a stylistic model than in the fashion of a palimpsest or ré-écriture, adapted to the purpose of unmasking the Florentine preacher as a heretic.

After an incipit redolent of that of Petrarch's Trionfi ("Era nel tempo quando gli albucegli / son rivestiti di nuova verdura", I, 1–2, after Foligno 1926, 9), the epic subject relates that a Divine vision has been vouchsafed to him, in which Saint Augustine of Hippo took him on a tour of hell.

In an infernal swamp, the two travellers of the beyond see those who have abandoned hope. Having crossed it, they arrive at the gates of the city of Dis, which are adorned with a slightly modified version of the inscription known to the reader from the door of Dante's hell. Thus, Gerini transposes elements from the Comedy to slightly different positions. Similarly, at another moment in the first canto, Gerini avails himself of a technique used by Dante with reference to the prophet Ezekiel (in Purgatorio XXIX, 100): he refers the reader to the greater authority of another text, in which further details may be found – in this case, the Commedia itself:

Non bisogna di lor parli piú note Che'l vostro buon poeta vero lume N'à dato tal che piú dar non si puote (II, 22–24, after Foligno 1926, 13).

There are many more elements taken from the Divine Comedy, including the nobile castello, Minos, the storm in the zone of the lussuriosi, and various examples of contrapasso. In canto eight, the pilgrims arrive in the zone of the heretics, false prophets and soothsayers, and here the epic subject asks his guide of the future fate of Girolamo Savonarola, who claims to be a prophet. Augustine warns his disciple against believing in Savonarola's prophecies and predicts the preacher's violent end (VIII, 180–205 and IX, 28–51, after Foligno 1926, 24–25).

Cantos ten, eleven and twelve introduce a detailed list of heresies and heretics far beyond the rather restrained treatment of the subject in Dante's text. Canto thirteen adds a list of dangerous books. The epic subject then declaims the Creed, and Augustine, having counseled him on various aspects of religious life, leaves him. The narrator awakes and finds himself in Florence, where he witnesses Savonarola's death in the Piazza della Signorina; this atrocious tale fills the fourteenth, and last, canto. The texts ends on a vernacular paraphrase of the De profundis.

Gerini, an occasional writer with a middle class, secular background, makes little attempt to use Dante's Comedy as a model or basis for his own poetic creativity. Instead, he refashions and rewrites it as a polemic against Savonarola. In the same epoch, but over a longer period of time (1493–1515), the Dominican friar Tommaso Sardi elaborated and annotated another terza rima poem, entitled Anima peregrina and likewise unprinted, even though its author fervently wished for the publication of this work. There are several manuscripts, one of which is the poet's autograph preserved at Santa Maria Novella (Marino 1998, 7), where Sardi spent the greater part of his life. A stout supporter of the Medici family, he was critical of Savonarola's alleged prophetic gifts, but much less so than Gerini, who localized him in hell amongst the false prophets. In fact, in his poem Sardi puts Savonarola in Purgatory and stresses his intellectual qualities (Marino 1998, 50).

Like the Divine Comedy, Sardi's Anima peregrina consists of 100 cantos of terzine in three books. The epic subject is guided by Moses in the first book, by St. Paul in the second, and by a dog, the symbol of the Domini canes or Dominicans, in the third.

Moses and the narrator first have to pass through the four elements, each of which is associated with a capital sin and exemplified by a living being, which in some way has to be overcome by the epic subject. Sardi here dramatizes a sophisticated theological and philosophical analysis of the principal vices. After this, the two pilgrims meet the prosopopeia of death, la Morte, and learn about various aspects of man's ultimate destiny from her. The rest of the first book recounts the pilgrims' voyage through the seven celestial spheres to the Empyreum, replete with encounters and dialogues with various souls, from St. Paul, Virgil, Dante and Petrarch to Federico da Montefeltro and Piero de' Medici. Just as in Dante, these souls appear in the spheres of the stars which governed them most in life, without really having their being in these spheres.

The importance of the Divine Comedy as a model and pretext is very obvious from these observations, and yet it has to be stressed that Sardi, unlike Gerini, elaborates on this model in highly original ways, such as the details of each heavenly region (especially their gates, Nardello 2002, 125) or aspects of theology. Sardi's style takes up many Dantisms, but at the same time it is quite different from Dante's, with a certain tendency towards abstraction and abruptness, as demonstrated by the very first verses of the poem:

Somniferando ascesi l aspro monte che ci conduce ad una eterna vita. (Liber primus, I, 1–2, unpublished transcription by Sascha Resch after: Sardi [around 1500], 11r.)

At the entrance to the Empyreum, Moses has to leave the epic subject, and in the second book St. Paul takes over, in order to guide the narrator through Limbo and Purgatory and the seats of the blessed and the damned. Only at this point do we enter the beyond in a more theological sense, the celestial spheres having been part of the material world.

The Dominican friar Sardi here corrects and in part contradicts Dante's theology of the afterlife. In a very original way, he describes this part of the pilgrimage as a fast double movement of descent and ascent, freed from the reins of material travel. Thus, moments in regions of hell alternate with visits to heavenly realms. In these capitoli, many theological questions such as the validity of the teachings of Origenes and the fate of children who die without baptism are discussed. Sardi adopts a more theologically orthodox ordering of the sins in hell than Dante's Inferno does, by adopting the limpid structure according to the Capital Sins used in the latter's Purgatorio. From gula in the highest region the pilgrims descend all the way down to superbia, where Lucifer dwells. In a remarkable scene situated at the bottom of hell, the epic subject, with the aid of St. Michael, makes Lucifer confess his sin of pride:

Allhora il domandai quando in cielo era che peccato fu'l suo? e mi rispose[:] amor proprio di se che troppo spera. Et che sperasti? et ei[:] piu alte cose di creatura farmi creatore[.] virtù all apetir non corrispose En ciel si fe per me cotal romore che mecho primo tucti e mie sequaci fumo scacciati dal divin furore. (Liber Secundus, XXVIII, 16–24, unpublished transcription by Sascha Resch after: Sardi [around 1500], 134r.)

This remarkably articulate Lucifer understands and explains his own sin, as opposed to the silent brooding of Dante's fallen angel, who merely chews on the bodies of the three greatest traitors in the history of man (Inferno XXXIV, 28–69). Such edifying theology entails, however, a somewhat bland reading experience, far removed from the horrors of Dante's hell. The rewriting offered by Sardi corrects Dante in a non-Dantesque style.

The third book of Anima peregrina then deviates completely from the narrative frame offered by the Comedy and offers discussions on questions of religion, including the Seven Sacraments, and of politics. It ends on a dedication to Giovanni de' Medici, the future Pope Leo X.

Sardi's poem is similar to Gerini's in that it is a rewrite of Dante's Comedy rather than a completely new work modelled on it. But the type of rewrite offered here is far more sophisticated and of a more 'dialogical' form: it is a correction of Dante's text.

#### 3.2.2.3 A Superatio Dantis? Francesco Zorzi / Francesco Giorgio Veneto: L'elegante poema

The Franciscan humanist friar Francesco Zorzi or Fancesco Giorgio Veneto is known to students of Philosophia perennis for his Latin poem, De harmonia mundi totius cantica tria (Schmidt-Biggemann 1998). Between 1536 and 1540, after a long period at San Francesco della Vigna in Venice, he spent his retirement in the San Girolamo convent at Asolo, composing an enormous vernacular terza rima poem on the history of salvation, over the course of 114 cantos and 18.000 endecasillabi (Maillard in Zorzi 1991, xv).

For his material, he drew not only on the Divine Comedy (the privileged intertext marked by the chosen metre), but also on sources from Greek, Roman (and Egyptian) antiquity and the Christian tradition, including the enrichment it received especially in the fifteenth century by the addition of Neoplatonic, hermetic and Jewish sources and what came to be known as the Christian Kabbala (Mesnard in Zorzi 1991, vii). Similar to Sardi's Anima peregrina, the Elegante poema is accompanied by a commentary written by the author himself. Its title alludes both to the aspirations of its author and to its subject, the book of Creation and Divine History, which as God's work, must be elegant (see Zorzi 1991, 446).

In the poem, the history of mankind is not recounted in linear form. Instead, the poet receives answers to his doubts on 383 passages of the Old Testament, by twenty patriarchs and prophets, who speak to him on the hills of Asolo; unlike Dante, Zorzi reveals that all of this is fictional (Zorzi 1991, 9 and 27). Every element of the Old Testament text that is taken up is read from a perspective leading up to Christ and His work of salvation. This is why the author can claim that the plot of his poem is unified, in spite of the plurality of doubts treated by the elders and prophets (Zorzi 1991, 9).

The surprising choice of writing not 100 cantos (like Dante), but 114, can be read as a gesture of surpassing the Divine Comedy by following a deeper wisdom denied to its author: that of kabbalistic gematria or numerology. The one or aleph, number of Divine plenitude, is also the one hundred, and it becomes flesh in David, a figure of Christ. David is the hand of God or iad, the numeric equivalent of which is fourteen (for this interpretation, see Maillard in Zorzi 1991, xxiii), hence 114 cantos.

The proemial canto sets the tone and sets out the implicit poetics of Zorzi's poem:

Vago al saper sempre hebbi'l mio desire, Poiché da me fu tolto'l crasso velo, Et che la mente cominciò a fiorire, [. . .] Et gli occhi al sommo sol alzai, che sgombra Le tenebrose notti, et dona luce, onde'l vero splendor almen s'adombra (Elegante poema, I, 1–3; 10–13, Zorzi 1991, 29)

The allusion to Dante's sun-clothed hill in Inferno I, 13–18 marks the differences between the Comedy and the Elegante poema: both look up to the sun (Dante: "guardai in alto", Inferno I, 16; Zorzi: "gli occhi al sommo sol alzai", Elegante poema I, 10), but Dante will fail in his aspiration (at least in the first canto), whereas Zorzi claims to have shed the errors of sensual youth and to have reached an understanding of the true splendour of the divine, if only 'through a glass, darkly' (adombra, cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12).

Zorzi goes on to explain that he, like Dante, will rely on spiritual guides, but he adds a Platonic note: what he will reveal in the following cantos came to him after a severe illness and is thus the product of "furor santo" (I, 15). He then distances himself from poets who sing of invented, vain things, even though, as he has stated in his preface (Zorzi 1991, 9) the action of his poem is a fictional one – but it is obviously intended that the Christian content matter revealed in it is not. This distancing includes the poets of earthly love (I, 16–18). Zorzi then evokes the sweet hills around Asolo (as a synecdoche of the beauty of Creation), where the epic subject is accosted by the first guiding soul, Adam:

Ecco da destra parte cinta intorno Di relucenti raggi un'ombra lieta, Venir ver me, con viso grav'e adorno, Com'huom, che nel veder suo, mal s'acqueta, Per subita apparenza mi cangiai, [. . .] Et ella con benigni aspetti sui Disse, Son l'alma a prieghi tuoi mandata, Per scioglier et snodar li dubbi tui, Primo dotato fui di alma non nata, A sembianza di quel vero lume, Per cui fu mia virtù poi riformata (Elegante poema, I, 34–38; I, 58–63, Zorzi 1991, 31–32)

Zorzi takes up typically Dantean techniques like the pseudo simile (verses 37–38) or the periphrastic riddle with which a new character entering the scene announces himself (lines 61–62). At the same time, as a Venetian, Zorzi writes literary Tuscan, as stipulated by his friend Bembo. His writing is more erudite and at the same time clearer than Sardi's. This is quite clearly an independent work in the tradition of Dante, but emulating him and occasionally distancing itself from the Comedy by virtue of its different philosophical and theological content.

Unlike the influential Harmonia mundi, the Elegante poema remained unpublished, not least because its author died at the moment of its completion, in 1540. But in any case, the new spirit of religious orthodoxy established, first, by the Protestant Reformation and then, by the Catholic Counter Reformation, was not propitious to the plurality of traditions and sources employed by it, even though, according to Mesnard (in Zorzi 1991, viii), French authors such as Guy Le Fèvre de la Broderie or Jean de la Ceppède remarkably wrote texts that make one think they might well have seen a copy of the Venetian's vernacular poem.

#### 3.2.3 The Presence of Dante in the Romanzo. Ariosto, Tasso (Matteo Cazzato)

The Italian ottavarima romance has medieval roots and, in its early modern evolution, follows a path much of its own, via Pulci, Boiardo and Ariosto, the recodification of the genre as a heroic poem in works by Trissino, Alamanni, Giraldi or Pigna (Jossa 2002) to Torquato Tasso. At the same time, it is in constant contact with developments in other genres and, as will be seen, Ariosto and Tasso occasionally use Dante's Commedia as an alternative model.

#### 3.2.3.1 Ariosto

Ariosto is famous for his virtuosic juggling with different discursive models, such as Petrarchism or the semantics and rhetoric of the Latin love elegy, and their systemic interferences in his Rime and in the Orlando furioso (Hempfer 1988, 1989, 1991, 1993a). This makes him a perfect exponent of the reflection on the 'plurality' or 'pluralization' of discursive worlds that lies at the heart of some recent definitions of renaissance episteme (Hempfer 1993b, Hempfer 2010b, Höfele 2013).

Within this choice of models, Dante has an important role, as has been shown in numerous studies of Ariosto's use of linguistic materials from the Tuscan poet (Ferroni 2008; Ferroni 2012, 83–84), as well as in studies on intertextuality in the Furioso in general.7 If it is true that Ariosto intervened in the poem's language on several occasions in order to get closer to the model established by Bembo, it is also true that Dante's language remains an important point of formal reference, just as it had been in the tradition from the cantari up to Ariosto's predecessor Boiardo.8 But, in a similar manner to the case of Petrarch and Petrarchism, the literary interrelation between Ariosto and Dante pertains not just to the linguistic aspect, but to all levels of a rich intertextual dialogue.9

Ariosto takes up typical Dantesque elements such as prophecies, descriptions of the supernatural world, characters with a hellish or heavenly aspect, and

It is impossible to list even the most important studies here. A selection must include: Ascoli 2001; Blasucci 1968; Brancati 2016; Cabani 2013; D'Alfonso 1987; Mariani 1981; Ossola 1976a; Segre 1966.

Some of the most important studies on the earlier tradition are: Branca 1936, 7–20; Cabani 1988, 38–45; Melli 1958; Villoresi 2005; for Boiardo: Cavallo 1991; Cremante 1970; Sangirardi 1998. The various dimensions of Dantean intertextuality in the romanzo, especially what might be termed the ideological level and including Boiardo's use of early commentaries on the Commedia, are the subject of the ongoing doctoral thesis of this chapter's author, Matteo Cazzato.

narrative situations (Segre 1966). On the stylistic level, Ariosto tries to polish and contain Dante's expressiveness, which was so dear to Pulci (Cabani 2003), and reduces the pathos, which will later be taken up by Tasso (Blasucci 1968). Among the various linguistic Dantisms in Ariosto, one that is very particular and widespread is the repetition of "di qua di là di su di giù" (Alighieri 2007, I, Inferno V, 43) throughout the poem and with a particular concentration in its most turbulent place, the castle of Atlas; this expression becomes a linguistic indicator of the entrelacée movement of the text and the characters (Zatti 2011).

Dantean intertextuality in Ariosto is well known on the quantitative and formal level. But it is necessary to understand the hermeneutical implications of this intertextuality, and recent research has been moving in this direction (see in particular Bartoli 2017). The elements taken from Dante are not neutral. They tend to be refunctionalised, creating a complex and comprehensive intertextual network.

Some scholars have proposed the idea that Ariosto wanted to rewrite the Commedia (Bologna 1998), perhaps positioning himself as an alternative to the Florentine model (Haywood 1999). In the early modern competition for cultural primacy, Florence and Ferrara were opponents. Landino's 1481 commentary on the Commedia placed the city of Florence at a high cultural level by reclaiming Dante as its long-lost son (see above, 3.1.1). In light of this, Ariosto's rewriting of certain episodes of the Commedia (e.g. by presenting Astolfo as a traveller into the realm of the beyond: Sangirardi 2001; Zatti 1990; 2016) could be read as a politically aimed parody (Ricci 2002).

But beyond these questions of authority and politics, research into what may be termed the ideological level of Ariosto's use of Dante has only recently begun (Bartoli 2017; Johnson Haddad 1989). An example is the didactic dimension achieved by narrating Ruggiero's path to virtue and the function of Dante's version of the character of Ulysses therein (Ascoli 1987, 121–247; Picchio 1999, 2007).

Within the moral system of the Alcina episode (Ariosto 2001, cantos 7 and 8), the two poles, Logistilla and Alcina, can be compared to Dante's Beatrice and the siren of Purgatorio XIX (Alighieri 2007, II) respectively. Another mythical figure taken up by both Dante and Ariosto with moral implications is that of Hercules. Hercules can, according to tradition, deviate towards madness (the title of the Furioso seems to allude to Seneca's tragedy, Hercules furens). But there is also a positive side: Hercules as a hero who makes wise choices and whose strength is authentic, in opposition to Dante's Ulysses who employs trickery and acts in a presumptuous fashion. As a hero Hercules also vanquishes the monsters of Hell, and he has an important role within the discursive worlds of civil humanism and Neoplatonism.

In order to establish more firmly the background of such reusing of materials taken from (or in some cases: handed down via) Dante, it is important to consider the precise editions and comments used by Ariosto in reading the Florentine poet. In fact, Ariosto maintained friendly relationships with the scholar and philosopher, "Il dotto Celio Calcagnin" (Ariosto 2001, XLII, 90). Calcagnini was an exponent of esoteric and Neoplatonic thought and created some interesting glosses on the Commedia (Danzi 2012), but he was also in contact with Erasmus.

Another Neoplatonic influence is, of course, Landino's commentary, which the poet used. This can be seen in Ariosto's use of a famous verse form the Inferno: "più che 'l dolore, poté il digiuno" (Alighieri 2007, I, Inferno XXXIII, 75). Ariosto uses it in his story of Norandino ("poté la pietà più che 'l timore", Ariosto 2001, XVII, 48, 5) and in two other cases: "più de l'ostinazion poté il timore" (XXI, 54, 8) and "abbia in lei, più ch'amor, potuto l'ira" (XXIII, 7, 3). In the first of these quotations, rather than Dante's struggle between two affects, we see a virtue prevailing over a negative emotion: pietà, which could be linked to Landino's discussion of another virtue, temperance, in his comment on Inferno XXXIII, 75. In the other two cases, Ariosto follows the Dantean model more closely, but all three are linked to the subject of temperance introduced into this context by Landino.

It is instructive to mark the very different, religious use of the same verse by Tasso (1979) in Gerusalemme Liberata, II, 55, 6, where it is applied in a narrative context of religious war: 'Faith prevailed over fear.' As opposed to this, it can be argued that Ariosto's use of that verse is dependent upon Landino's reading of Dante. Landino connects it to the virtue of temperance, and temperance is indeed at stake when Ariosto reuses the verse, temperance respected or not respected by the characters involved in the various events. There could even be a connection to the age-long discussion of whether or not Ugolino alludes to cannibalism here (well-known modern commentaries discuss this, among many others one could cite: Scartazzini/Vandelli in: Alighieri 1938, 280, versus Chiavacci Leonardi in: Alighieri 2007, 1, 992). Landino evokes the possible cannibalism of Ugolino in order to deny it and contrasts it with the virtue of temperance promoted in his commentary (Landino 2001, II, 1002–1005). Ariosto then reuses this formula in episodes in some of which cannibalism – or a hint to it – emerges. Tasso, on the other hand, in his personal glosses to the Commedia, was silent on this wellknown episode, as was Vellutello in his very morally-upright commentary.

It has to be stressed, however, that this moral and, in part, didactic use of Dante is only one of many dimensions of Ariosto's glorious narrative machine, designed for engendering 'discrepant interpretations' (Hempfer 1987a).

#### 3.2.3.2 Tasso

For an author like Torquato Tasso, Dante is a much more central model of reference. Quotations and reuses from Dante are present throughout his work. The early chivalrous poem, Rinaldo, shares with the Commedia a narrative structure of ascent towards maturity, but this gravitates much more towards romance and can, in fact, be read as a correction of Ariosto's multilayered, anti-classical model: Tasso recounts the adventures of a single knight in search of the necessary perfection that might win him the hand of his Clarice. The Aristotelian unity achieved by this structure, is, however, in danger of degenerating into a loose sequence of adventures. Tasso obviates this danger by putting a strong accent on providence and Divine order as the decisive factor, especially with regard to the supernatural aspect (Regn 1989; Regn 1991a, 368). Here, aesthetic and ideological unity converge.

In some of the fundamental episodes of the young paladin's training path like the Valle del Dolore and the Colle della Speranza in canto XI, Dantesque elements turn out to be more than useful for constructing a series of symbolic references to the ideological structure of the poem (Navone 2020), with its vocabulary hinting at a Dantesque (but at the same time, romanzo-like) scenography: "aspre pene" and "eterni stridi" (in Tasso 2012: XI, 5, 6), "incerta strada", "ombrosa valle" and "dritto calle" (XI, 48, 6–8), "tenebrosa e scura" (XI, 49, 3), "valle ria" (XI, 50, 1), "sospiri" (XI, 53, 4), "dritta via" and "nube oscura e ria" (XI, 58, 4 and 6). Tasso also offers us a sort of education in love in cantos IX and X, in which Rinaldo oscillates between the morally inferior love for Floriana and the right one for Clarice. In this context, Tasso reuses many elements from Inferno V, and we can compare "il lume di ragion loro adombrava" (IX, 9, 6) with "la ragion sommettono al talento" (Alighieri 2007, I, Inferno 5.39), "d'amar donna sì bella è pur costretto" (Tasso 2012, IX, 76, 8) with "Amor, ch'a nullo amato amar perdona" (Alighieri 2007, I, Inferno V, 103). A very Dantean use of the adjective tremante for the dissolute behaviour of sensual lovers occurs in canto IX (Tasso 2012, IX, 79, 6; cf. Alighieri 2007, I, Inferno V, 136). Beyond the Inferno, Tasso takes up a basic scheme from Dante's Vita Nova in a vision in which Clarice appears to urge the paladin to complete his path of growth (Tasso 2012, IX, 82; Alighieri 2018, 28, 93–94).

Dante is of even greater importance for the Gerusalemme liberata. The episode relating to Olindo and Sofronia in canto II of this epic presents a teaching of just love. What is particular is that Inferno V is used as a model in an antiphrastic way, as Dante had offered an anti-exemplum of love in that canto. Various lexical elements and images of the story quote from Dante's narrative of Paolo and Francesca, but they are re-functionalized so as to exemplify positive values, as opposed to those shared by Dante's two damned lovers.

In canto IV of Gerusalemme Liberata, there is an entire infernal phenomenology built on Dante's Hell, but in many ways in an antiphrastic form, in that Satan becomes an active, rather than a passive, force. The ongoing active danger emanating from the prince of Hell (as Counter Reformation teachings would have it) is dramatized by the amplification from Dante's "il gran nemico" (Dante 2017, I, Inferno VI, 115) to Tasso's "gran nemico de l'umane genti" (Tasso 1979, IV, 3). Tasso also borrows a model for using direct speech in narrative in the Commedia, in order to build an engaging rhetorical dimension full of pathos and dynamism (Scarpati 1987b).

Particularly striking examples of the use of elements borrowed from Dante in Tasso's Christian epic can be found in the episode of the forest of Saron (Scarpati 1987b; Bianchi 1999) or in the episode in which the crusaders try to overcome the limits of sight in the face of the pitfalls of beholding Armida's beauty in canto IV of Gerusalemme Liberata (Confalonieri 2018). The leader of the Christian army, Goffredo, is presented as an example of milita Christi with the words: "molto egli oprò col senno e con la mano" (Tasso 1979, I,1). This takes up a Dantesque formula ("fece col senno assai e con la spada", Alighieri 2007, I, Inferno XVI, 39), recontextualized into the new context of the epic story (Villa 1999).

Similar to Dante's, but less strict in its theological rigour, is the layer of allegorical meaning Tasso ascribes to his poem in an allegorical paratext or allegoria written later on, similar to those published for many romances (Hempfer 1983; Jossa 2022, 241–250). He uses this form of allegory first as a shield against censorship, but later it becomes a productive procedure in its own right (Fingerle 2022 and Morace 2011).

In his final complete rewriting of his epic, the Gerusalemme conquistata, an attempt at balancing narrative structure and ideological system, especially religion, can be observed throughout (Ardissino 1996, 53–78). On the textual level, this is testified in the poem by the increase of allegorical digressions, both by the expansion of those already present and by the introduction of new ones. Goffredo's dream in particular reveals itself to be closely linked to Dante's Paradiso, in lexicon, style and other structural aspects. The layout of the episode, the iconography of its scenes, the image of the golden staircase, is Dantesque (Alighieri 2007, III, Paradiso XXI). Tasso uses Landino's commentary, but his reception of Dante takes place in a different, Counter-Reformation context, in which other commentaries than that of Landino became more important, especially religiously orthodox ones with a clear moral message. This is especially the case for Vellutello's 1544 commentary, which can be placed within the context of the first catholic reactions to the Reformation, before the proper Counter-Reformation (Dalmas 2005; Gilson 2018, 175–208). Tasso may have come to know it in his early years, when he moved in Venetian and Paduan circles, but it is interesting to note that he did not own a copy of it, whereas he had one of Landino's (Bianchi 1997, 1998; Squicciarini 2020). But even so, he moved in circles in which Dante's Commedia was being read in a different way than its Neoplatonic reading around 1500, and his use of the Tuscan poet reflects this.

A very different kind of close link between Dante and Tasso can be found in Tasso's creation epic, Il mondo creato, which is partly a ré-écriture of Du Bartas' La Sepmaine, doing away with much of the reformation theology of the French text. Here, in a poem that has little in common with the subject matter treated by Dante, Tasso functions as a virtuoso poeta theologus just like the Tuscan bard, yet remains at pains to stay within the confines of counter reformation theology (Mehltretter 2021).

The presence of Dante in Tasso's works, then, is not only an effect of poetic memory or an attempt to adopt a particular stylistic model, it works as a point of reference, a dialogue partner, and is based on – in part – common values, as the two authors share a concept of poetry as knowledge of the divine (Ardissino 1996, 129–158). But Dante as an epic poet is clearly subordinated to the more important model of Aristotelian theory of the epic, as developed in Tasso's Discorsi.

#### 3.2.4 'Heterodox Dantism': Folengo (Florian Mehltretter)

In 3.1.3.1, Teofilo Folengo has been introduced as a champion of stylistic and linguistic pluralism, which, in the context of the Cinquecento debates, can in itself be taken as a pro-Dantesque gesture. And indeed, in the dispute between the followers of Petrarch and of Dante, he takes the side of the latter, referring to him as "Omer toscano" in his 1526 romance, Orlandino. His argument to support this is taken from Pico and Bembo (see above, 3.1.1) in that Dante is declared to be the poet of sense and Petrarch the poet of words, but Folengo turns it on its head: just as faith is superior to good works, Beatrice is superior to Laura (III, 17–19 in: Folengo 1991, 71–72; Jossa 2011, 44). The theological implications of this comparison connect Folengo's statement to the religious debates of his time (Goffis 1993, 410). In fact, it is not just the option of 'plurilingualism' that connects the two poets, but also a deep interest in religious matters (Folengo was, in fact, a monk who left his order for some time and re-entered it later).

Thus, in the thirteenth book of Folengo's macaronic comic epic in hexameters, Baldus, of 1517 a parody of Dante's celestial spheres is laid out. According to Goffis (1993, 412) this is not directed at Dante's art, which Folengo cherishes, but at the theology of a hierarchy of the heavens. There is also a Ulysses figure in this poem, the pirate Lirone, who explores an underworld of devils (book 20 to 23), and a kind of 'answer' to Dante's Branca Doria, Caposeccus (book 24). Goffis (1993, 413) treats these dialogic phenomena as 'deformations' of Dante's well-loved text, aimed at making theological points such as the one relating to predestination (in the case of Caposeccus). Folengo's 'heterodox Dantism' (Goffis 1993) uses the Commedia as a vehicle for a general critique of Christendom for its abandonment of the Gospel, the vanity of attributing to itself what only Christ can do, and the sin of trying to define the mysteries of God by theology. Obviously, the two poets would not have seen eye to eye in all of these cases, but they do in their strong criticism of the Roman Church.

As stated in chapter 3.1.3.1, the macaronic language championed in Baldus becomes one of three idioms in Folengo's 1527 Chaos del Triperuno, a work that echoes the general form of 'Dante' the pilgrim's path of salvation in the Comedy in the shape of an exit from the labyrinth and a return to a purer faith, by way of crossing several forests or selve (like Dante's selva oscura). The term selva alludes, at the same time, to a literary genre, the silva. The book is constituted by three such silvae, a trinitarian structure that can be compared to that of the Comedy. The three heteronyms of the author, Merlino, Limerno and Fùlica, are at the same time intradiegetic characters who, throughout the course of the work, converge in the Triperuno, the trinitarian figure of the title. The intricate and and often obtuse plot can be read in (at least) three ways, exemplified by the three female commentators presented at the outset: as a biography (as in Folengo's niece's interpretation), in an anagogic sense (his mother, Paola) and in a more generally allegorical or epistemic sense (his sister, Corona) – clearly an adaptation of Dante's idea of imitating the four senses of scripture in his poem. An important moment of the biography encrypted in the text is the protagonist's courtship of Galanta, an allegory, in Antonio Daniele's words, of "la caduta nella perdizione amorosa", but at the same time of the author's flirt with Aristotelianism rather than theology (Daniele 2021, 178) – just as Dante's error in Inferno I and Purgatorio XXX could be read both as an erotic and a philosophical one. Goffis (1995, 128) points out that Folengo takes evangelical, Erasmian and neo-Augustinian attitudes, although he never openly embraces Protestantism. Goffus even refers to the Chaos as an "eterodossa Commedia." As opposed to Dante's poem, however, Folengo's Chaos distances itself from rational, systematic forms of theology, opting instead for the truth of the Gospel alone (Goffis 1995, 135).

On a biographical level, there is also a strong element of invective against Folengo's personal enemies within the Church (Daniele 2013, 93) and of the depravity of the clergy (Daniele 2021, 192), another aspect Folengo has in common with the Dante of the Commedia.

In the end, Triperuno finds unity over and above the plurality of his styles, heteronyms and identities, in Christ. Kneeling before Him, he is saved by Divine Grace from the labyrinth of error. This – partly Dantesque – subject matter is treated in the freest possible manner, not only linguistically in the three registers realized under the three heteronyms, but also as regards metrical form. Folengo writes true silvae in a prosimetric mixture of dialogue, narration and various metrical genres, thus carrying the mixed style, for which Dante was criticized in the 1520s, to an extreme.

Another work by Folengo needs to be mentioned here, as it is in some ways stylistically even closer to Dante's: his terzina epic, La Palermitana, written in old age, probably unfinished, and never published during the author's lifetime.

It is true that the terza rima writing here harks back to Petrarch's Trionfi as well as to Dante, and the subject of a sacred history from the Creation onward is quite different from that of the Commedia. Teofilo narrates his fictional pilgrimage to Palestine and his meeting with a community of hermits there (led by the monk Palermo mentioned in the title), with whom he attends a sacred performance of the history of the world, from the Creation to the birth of Christ and the appearance of the Church. But it could be argued that the idea of a revelation of sacred history in the form of a play as the central event of a pilgrimage can be linked at the very least to the Purgatorio (and by the middle position of this cantica within the Comedy to the work as a whole). This becomes clear when we appreciate the sheer length and weight of the divine pageant and subsequent ritual play in the last four cantos of Purgatory, during which Dante not only repents and re-enters the community of the saved, but learns of the true nature of history and the apocalyptic future, which he is then ordained to reveal to his readers (Mehltretter 2005).

The first of the two books Folengo managed to finish ends with Palermo's death at the sight of the tools of Christ's Passion. The second book takes up the events of the New Testament up to the Song of Simeon.

There are some interesting and very concrete Dantean echoes in certain passages of the text, especially in those parts in which Folengo criticizes the Church of his day, just as Dante did for his own time. Thus, Goffis (1995, 142) points out that at the opening of the second canto from book I of the Palermitana, Folengo takes up both the general trend and the syntactical structure of a passage from Dante's Paradiso (XXVII, 40–42): Dante's "Non fu la Sposa di Cristo / allevata dal sangue mio [. . .] / per essere ad acquisto d'oro usata" becomes:

– Io mai non scesi dal mio ciel sereno qui ad esser uomo e, di monarca tanto,

nascer in grembo a povertà sul feno perché, Babel, tu, scelta al maggior manto, al maggior scanno d'Aron e di Mose, Sodoma fossi e avessi nome santo (Folengo 2006, 250)

In this late work, then, it is no longer the mixed style associated, amongst others, with Dante, but instead, in a certain fashion, Dante's language as such that becomes Folengo's model.

### 3.3 New Perspectives towards the End of the Century

During the second half of the sixteenth century, the debate on Dante took on a more theoretically complex form, one which included some innovative poetological aspects. Even where these are the results of misunderstandings or tendentious readings, they open up new perspectives on Dante and establish him as a possible model of aesthetically advanced kinds of writing.

#### 3.3.1 Phantastic or Icastic? Dante and the Debate on Mimesis (Mazzoni, Tasso)

In 1572, a hitherto unidentified author, probably using a pseudonym, circulated in manuscript form a Discorso di M. Ridolfo Castravilla nel quale si mostra l'imperfettione della "Commedia" di Dante contro al "Dialogo delle lingue" del Varchi, a refutation of Benedetto Varchi's statement that Dante is greater than Homer. Castravilla (2018) criticized the Commedia for not being a classical epic imitating action in the Aristotelian sense, but, rather, the dream vision of a private individual (Gilson 2018, 136). One year later, Jacopo Mazzoni took Dante's side, trying to invalidate some of Castravilla's arguments in his brief Discorso in difesa della Commedia, which he lengthened in 1587 into a vast tract of seven books, the Difesa della comedia di Dante. 10

These two texts go far beyond mere apologetics (and are therefore treated in this chapter rather than in chapter 1), opening as they do a new perspective

The most important aspects of this debate are to be found in Barbi 1975, 37–56; Vallone 1969, 59–170; Weinberg 1961, chapter 16 and 17, especially II, 831–837; Gilson 2018, 136–138.

on the nature of literature. To be sure, the innovations contained in them are often based on apologetic rhetoric and even misunderstandings (as will be seen in Torquato Tasso's perceptive comments on them), but they nevertheless make of Dante a prime exemplar of a new kind of writing, which doubtless contributed to the poetics of the Italian baroque.

#### 3.3.1.1 Mazzoni's Dante and 'Phantastic Imitation'

Mazzoni's approach is based on an eclectic Platonic-Aristotelian theory of mimesis (Giglioni 2010, 6), which includes elements taken from the tradition of rhetoric. Thus, his concept of verisimilitude as a likeness of truth or "simulacro del vero" (Mazzoni 1982, 9) is closer to the rhetorical tradition than to Aristotle's idea of verisimilar imitation as an exemplification of general truths by the depiction of a particular action. Mazzoni combines this rhetorical concept, however, with Plato's notion of eidola, which he strips of its negative ontological implications. Mimesis is a rendering of eidola or mental representations that stand in a relation of similarity to elements of the real world. It is of little moment if this similarity turns out to be superficial or even deceptive, as long as the mimesis produces the desired effect on the reader.

Developing Francesco Patrizi da Cherso's interpretation of Plato's Sophist in the former's Della poetica, la deca disputata (Patrizi 1586, 75–85) and turning it on its head, Mazzoni develops a sophist concept of poetry (for which he is later criticized by Patrizi in his posthumous Deca ammirabile, see Scarpati 1987a, 241). Generally speaking, imitation, according to this theory, can be icastic (a depiction of something that is in itself to be considered real) or phantastic (a creation of an invented image that shares similarities with real objects, but does not refer to one – see, with due differences, Sophist 266e, Plato 1921, 452–453). The first named can also be called poetica, whereas only the second is to be taken as poesia in the true sense (Mazzoni 1982, 71). Following both Plato and Aristotle, Mazzoni then distinguishes between a type of imitation that makes use of the actor's body (dramatic mimesis) and a type based on narration. Both of these types can be either phantastic or icastic, resulting in a fourfold paradigm of dramaticicastic, dramatic-phantastic, narrative-icastic and narrative-phantastic (Mazzoni 1982, 34; more detailed in Mazzoni 1587, 399).

Mazzoni stresses that not just phantastic, but also icastic imitation creates eidola, adding particulars, similes or other fictitious elements to the general image. This seems close to Torquato Tasso's (roughly contemporary) concept of concetti as the particular perspective in which an object is represented by the choice of particulars or by adding tropes (Tasso 1977, II, 338–341), but Mazzoni adds what can be considered a sceptical and at the same time a sophist twist to it (Giglioni 2010, 7; Katinis 2018, 122): any rendering of an image, whether of a real or an imagined object, includes an element of fiction, and therefore even icastic poetry contains in it something of the phantastic. In a way, phantastic mimesis thus appears to be the fundamental or primary form of poetry; this is also mirrored by Mazzoni's use of the term poesia for phantastic poetry only (Mazzoni 1982, 71).

From a rhetorical and, indeed, sophist perspective, Mazzoni prefers credibility to truth and values a pleasing effect on the reader higher than a faithful representation of the outside world. If for Plato (Sophist 239e, Plato 1921, 348–349), the 'false' is the material of the sophist, it follows for Mazzoni that "poetry is sophistic art" (Katinis 2018, 115). Against Plato's negative verdict, Mazzoni therefore seeks to revaluate the sophists, relying especially on Philostratus (Moreschini 2015, 264).

According to this view, the elaboration of credible phantastic images and, in the case of icastic poetry, of the particularizing images that render it partly akin to the phantastic, is the core of the poet's art (Mazzoni 1982, 41). One can depict something in a low and common manner, but that is best avoided. On the other hand, one can make lowly objects appear great and sublime, and Dante is a past master of this. In his works, even the lowest things are "meravigliosi e divini per una artificiosissima evidenza" (Mazzoni 1982, 43). The use of the rhetorical term evidenza in this context suggests that credibility is best attained by creating an illusion of presenting the object itself; it depends chiefly on a superficial similarity between the visual image that is evoked and its object, not on plausible demonstration or analysis. But on the other hand, mere rhetorical verisimilitude would be insufficient for poetry; there has to be meraviglia as well for there to be poesia (Mazzoni 1982, 78). This concept of 'marvel' seems to be the point of coincidence of the phantastic (and therefore surprising) image, the striking moment of evidence, and a general striving for effect.

The poetics of verisimilitude by evidence can also refer to images that render abstract entities palpable to the sensual imagination, as in Dante's image of the Trinity in Paradiso XXXIII, 115–120, a poetic technique Mazzoni (1982, 69) much commends. This is one of three general conclusions Mazzoni draws from his introductory observations in the Difesa. The second is that the poet has to prefer untrue, but credible things to true but incredible ones, an argument in a way inherent in Aristotle's distinction (in Poetics 9, 1451a, Aristotle 1995, 58–59) between the philosophical, general truths relevant for the poet and the particular factuality of history, but not in this way developed by the Stagirite himself. In Mazzoni's rhetorical or sophist framework of verisimilitude as outward similarity to reality, however, this preference does not make quite as much sense as in Aristotle's argument. Aristotle's statement, according to which the preference for what can plausibly happen over what has actually happened makes the poet more of a philosopher than the historian, would be all but incomprehensible, if plausibility were to be taken as mere superficial likeness.

Mazzoni seems to be quite conscious of this, as becomes apparent in his third conclusion, which according to him follows on from the first two: the preference for credibility rather than truth makes the poet a sophist (Mazzoni 1982, 70). This can be read as an anti-Aristotelian gesture, because it mimics Aristotle's argumentation, replacing, however, the term 'philosopher' by 'sophist' – and, implicitly, replacing Aristotle's concept of verisimilitude with a more rhetorical version, predominantly geared to effect. In the third book of the Difesa, Mazzoni (1587, 395) goes as far as to say that the true poet takes "la bugia per soggetto."

The poet, then, aims for a marvelous, delightful effect in the reader by creating images. This can happen either in the icastic mode by the special way of presenting a given object, or in the phantastic mode by inventing entities that do not exist in the real world, but are in a way similar to aspects of reality as to be credible – with the phantastic being the more fundamental of the two. This is, however, not a passive process as in a dream, it is a creative activity, at best an active daydream. Mazzoni is at pains to refute any idea that Dante's Commedia could be the account of a mere dream and even attributes to Dante a theory of poetic creation as phantastic invention in this fashion. In order to do this, he reads the adjective alta in Paradiso XXXIII, 142 ("A l'alta phantasia qui mancò possa", Alighieri 2007, III, 927) as a defining, rather than an ornamental, attribute: Dante would thus have distinguished between ordinary imagination and the higher form of intellectual imagination used by the poet (Moreschini 2015, 276).

Dante is credited here with a particular force of invention 'ex nihilo', which, in the case of Mazzoni, is no longer presented as a product of divine furor – as opposed to Landino's 1481 commentary (Landino 2001, I, 258; Gilson 2005, 188) – but as a 'sophist' technique. It is, however, necessary to add that none of this makes Mazzoni a theorist of phantastic literature in the modern sense. Dante may, in Mazzoni's interpretation, have invented images and even entities and actions in order to convey theological and philosophical truths, but the foundations of Dante's world, the Creation and the Christian beyond and afterlife, are not themselves presented as phantastic inventions. And yet, Mazzoni's insistence on bugia and meraviglia certainly derive new poetological options from his special reading of Dante, which will become more relevant in the literature after 1600 (see below, 3.3.1.3).

#### 3.3.1.2 Tasso's Critique of Mazzoni

In his Discorsi del poema eroico of 1594, Tasso takes up some of the positions of his earlier Discorsi dell'arte poetica of 1587, amplifying and correcting them. In the libro secondo of this new tract, he includes a critique of Mazzoni's Difesa, the first part of which had been printed in 1587, the year of Tasso's earlier Discorsi. Tasso proposes an eclectic Platonic-Aristotelian approach, enriched by many elements derived from other authors of antiquity, but at the same time adopting a resolutely Christian perspective.

The second book of the Discorsi deals with literary invention and the question of verisimilitude. Perhaps surprisingly, instead of departing from Aristotle's idea of the philosophical nature of poetry as opposed to history, which derives from the poet's art of exemplifying general truths rather than recounting particular accidents (Poetics 9, 1451a, 35–1451b, 26, Aristotle 1995, 58–61), Tasso compares literature to oratory. Like the rhetorician, the poet has to start with inventio, and literary invention means the selection of suitable material for his art. This allows Tasso to address more directly an issue that in Aristotle is presented in a more ambiguous manner: should the poet look for existent or nonexistent entities and facts as objects of his activity (Tasso 1977, I, 170–171)? Put like this, Tasso's preference for existing material seems the evident choice, as it would be counterintuitive to 'find' what does not exist (similarly, in his Apologia della Gerusalemme liberata, Tasso 1977, I, 83–86). In a second, more Platonic form of this ontological argument Tasso states (following a line of reasoning put forward by Francesco Patrizi da Cherso in the fourth book of his Della poetica, la deca disputata): "quel che non è, non si può imitare" (Tasso 1977, I, 176; for the background of this argument see Patrizi 1586, 75–85). Consequently, Tasso attacks Robortello's (1548, 2) and Piccolomini's (1572, v) comments on Aristotle's Poetics for stating that the poet is more concerned with "il falso che il vero" (Tasso 1977, I, 178).

In a more Aristotelian vein, Tasso subordinates the vero to the verosimile as its most plausible form, when he states that in an age in which all great deeds have been recorded in written history, a supposedly great deed that is not reported in books (being fictitious) is as a result less credible and thus less likely to induce emotional reactions such as pity and terror (Tasso 1977, I, 175–176). Here, an argument clearly elaborated within an Aristotelian framework touches the more sophist concern of the semblance of truth and its effects on the reader – without, however, giving up Tasso's prime concern for reality.

There are thus several points of view under which a poetics of the phantastic and the nonexistent has to be rebutted. Explicitly addressing Mazzoni's Difesa, Tasso states: "Però io non posso concedere né che la poesia si metta sotto l'arte de' sofisti, né che la perfettissima specie di poesia sia la fantastica." If fictions are to be included, they have to be probable, and in that case, fiction can be the object of literature, but not "in quanto egli è falso, ma in quanto è probabile; ma il probabile, in quanto egli è verisimile, appartiene al poeta" (Tasso 1977, I, 179). It is thus not the invented character of inventions that render them fit for poetry, but their aptitude to exemplify general truths – an option of fiction that seems inherent in Aristotle's argumentation, even if it is not overtly featured there. The sophist, on the other hand, is not interested in the probable, but only in the seemingly probable, which is not to be considered truly probable and thus fails to produce verisimilitude (Tasso 1977, I, 180 and 188).

Tasso allows that poetic enthymemata based on logical fallacies and false premises can occur in playful, witty love lyrics (as in contemporary madrigal writing including, one might add, his own), but the most perfect forms of poetry do not follow such sophist usage. Especially the higher forms like the epic have to deal with entities of the real world – not, for example, with centaurs, harpies and cyclops such as abound in the chivalrous romances by the likes of Ariosto. Mazzoni's argumentation, according to Tasso, is based on faulty reasoning (Tasso 1977, I, 181).

This does not mean that in Tasso's view only visible or palpable entities may be 'imitated' by literature. His idea of reality includes intelligible beings like angels, the divine supernatural, and devilish machinations. And in this perspective, Dante is, of course, an icastic rather than a phantastic poet, and a poetry of the marvelous remains possible within Aristotelian categories (Tasso 1977, I, 183–185, 190 and 192). Thus, not only does Mazzoni's deduction of a poetics of the phantastic from Dante's work appear erroneous, not even his reading of Dante itself can, in Tasso's view, be considered appropriate.

#### 3.3.1.3 From the Phantastic to the Bizarre (Marino, Tesauro)

At this point, it is necessary to add a few brief observations on the possible effect of the 'phantastic' on baroque literature beyond the year 1600.

In the aftermath of the counter reformation, it would clearly have been difficult to establish a form of literary representation that would eschew God's creation as its object in favour of nonexistent entities. Yet various developments, of which Mazzoni's plea for the phantastic is but one, contributed to a taste for the unusual, the striking, the strange and the bizarre. In this situation, the solution favoured by authors like Giovan Battista Marino and Emanuele Tesauro consists in an ingenious equation between the world created by God and the capricious inventions craved by both the poets and the reading public: in Marino's "La pittura" from his collection of Dicerie sacre (1614), the Creator himself is presented as a bizarre artist, and earthly artists can and should follow His example (Regn 2000, 359–382 and Regn 1998). According to Tesauro's theory of metaphor in Il cannocchiale aristotelico (1670, 267), it is the task of the poet to find and identify the surprising analogistic structure of the world itself and forge it into surprising images. Dante, however, is no longer one of the principal models of this trend, which is anyway based more on innovation than on tradition.

What both of these baroque authors (along with nearly all of their contemporaries) do share with Mazzoni is, however, the stress on the effect of meraviglia. The aim of poetry, according to this view, is not so much the representation of any truth or reality as its effect on its reader. As can be seen in baroque writing, this opens up the possibility of playing with falsehoods and paralogisms and making of poetry a self-referential game (Scarpati 1987a, 249) – even though this was presumably not Mazzoni's intention when he set out to defend Dante.

#### 3.3.2 Asprezza

The following chapter shows how a particular stylistic quality in Dante, which we will term asprezza ('harshness'), is discussed and imitated by sixteenthcentury Italian authors and how this process contributes to an awareness of stylistic options beyond mainstream Petrarchism. It could even be argued that, paradoxically, High Renaissance attempts at decanonizing Dante in favour of Petrarch on stylistic grounds, especially for his 'harsh' writing, indirectly contributed to this new option, for which Dante becomes a kind of alternative model towards the end of the century (Mehltretter 2022).

The choice of the term asprezza, which will be used in this chapter to cover certain aspects of this alternative kind of writing, is motivated by Dante's own strategy of highlighting the adjective aspro as a poetological term in the first verse of one of his canzoni petrose, and by the fact that at the end of the sixteenth century, the composer Luca Marenzio uses this very canzone for the programmatic opening of his last, aesthetically complex book of madrigals (1599). Two other terms besides – and to a certain degree parallel to – asprezza will appear in the discussions reported in the following pages: gravità and terribilità. The three concepts are by no means identical, but it is important to note that in the contexts in which they will appear, each one of them stands in direct opposition to concepts like dolcezza or piacevolezza. The various terms are thus elements of a structured field of oppositions and analogies, a rough sketch of which will be given here.

After a brief examination of Dante's own theory and practice of harshness, its reception and transformation in the Renaissance will be outlined, before the final part of this section will analyse the intermedial role of Dantean harshness between literature, fine arts and music in the years immediately before and after 1600.

#### 3.3.2.1 Dante's use of harshness

In Dante's works, almost the whole range of meanings of the word family derived from the Latin asper is present (Onder 1970). From antiquity onwards, use of the word shows a tendency towards metaphorical extension of meaning, often motivated by the common element of unpleasant sensual experience, as in a harsh surface, a rough sea, a hard winter, a tart wine or a raspy voice. In late antiquity, any non-periodic sound or noise could be considered harsh (Macrobius 1970, 103–107). In language, such a quality can originate from hiatus, as Cicero writes in the Orator ad Brutum (XLIV, 150, Cicero 2002, 47). But for Cicero, not just rough sounds can constitute asperitas; harshness can equally well be a result of the semantics and pragmatics of direct invective (De Oratore II, 53, Cicero 1995, 193–194).

For his 1599 book of madrigals, Marenzio chose a canzone of Dante's which unites these two forms of asprezza: harsh sound (especially by a clustering of consonants) and direct reprimand. The text in question, "Così nel mio parlar voglio essere aspro", is one of a group of poems referred to as the petrose since the nineteenth century, a cycle of four canzoni about physical desire dedicated to a stubborn lady who is consistently compared to a stone (pietra, hence petrose).11 In many ways, this group constitutes a complement and an opposite to the 'sweet new style' ("dolce stil novo", Purgatorio XXIV, 57) that characterizes much of Dante's lyrical output, especially in the Vita Nova. Whether its formal harshness is a consequence of its theme (Cudini in Alighieri 1979b, XXV) or its contents are a by-product of its deliberately rough form (Contini in Alighieri 1970, 149), there is a strong element of metapoetic reflection implicit in this poem, and it could even be read as a poetological allegory (Foster and Boyde in Alighieri 1967, II, 258–259).

Carducci 1865 and Imbriani 1882 were the first to argue in favour of considering the four poems as one group, but it will be shown below that at least one sixteenth century reader, Della Casa, may have believed the same. It should be added that "Così nel mio parlar" seems to stand somewhat apart from the other three compositions. On the other hand, it was a particularly visible canzone of Dante's in the early modern period, as it is the first composition in the part dedicated to Dante's canzoni in the Raccolta Aragonese and its tradition (Barbi 1915, 236).

The first stanza sets harsh consonants against a background of a more homogeneous blending of hard and soft sounds, but stresses the importance of asprezza on the semantic level; the fronte reads as follows:

Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro com'è negli atti questa bella pietra, la quale ognora impetra maggior durezza e più natura cruda, e veste sua persona d'un diaspro tal, che per lui, o perch'ella s'arretra, non esce di faretra saetta che già mai la colga ignuda. (Alighieri 2014, 421)

In further stanzas, the harsh element prevails, combined with stylistically 'low' vocabulary. Thus the fronte of the fifth stanza:

Così vedess'io lui fender per mezzo il cuore a la crudele che 'l mio squatra! poi non mi sarebb'atra la morte, ov'io per sua bellezza corro: ché tanto dà nel sol quanto nel rezzo questa scherana micidiale e latra. Oïmè, ché non latra per me, com'io per lei, nel caldo borro? (Alighieri 2014, 422)

The harsh consonant clusters, which characterize parts of this poem, stand out from more even stylistic surroundings, which are the result of a "tempering of harsh and smooth" (Durling and Martinez 1990, 167). This latter idea can be traced back to Dante's theory of style in De vulgari eloquentia (II.vii.7), in which he calls for a mixture of groomed (pexa) and unkempt words (yrsuta, Alighieri 1979a, 198), in order to avoid blandness. With reference to this ideal, "Così nel mio parlar" with its clusters of rough sounds constitutes, as it were, the outer boundary of the acceptable.

It is important to note, however, that the harshness found in this canzone corresponds, in some passages, to a decidedly low stylistic register, and rises to the heights of the sublime in others. This ambiguity characterizes Dante's use of harshness in general.<sup>12</sup> Thus, the third canzone of the Convivio, "Le dolci rime d'amor", treats a question of the philosophy of society (whether nobility is

For a more detailed version of this analysis, see Mehltretter 2022. For Bembo, see note 4 above.

grounded in birth) "con rima aspra e sottile" (Alighieri 1995, IV, v. 14, 253) and hence in an elevated style. The beginning of Inferno XXXII ("S'ïo avessi le rime aspre e chiocce", v. 1) seeks a harsh and even ugly sound for the lowest reaches of hell, but still invokes the muses, because what seems to be needed here is a difficult form of speech that is not necessarily 'low.' On the other hand, the comic performance of harsh sound and aggressive invective in Inferno XXX, 118–129 is couched in a decidedly low register, and listening to it is even, in Virgil's words, "bassa voglia" (v. 148).

The Renaissance reception of Dante's asprezza reduced this ambiguity and viewed the quality of harshness from a more classicist perspective. Pico della Mirandola uses the adjective asper in a letter to Lorenzo de' Medici in which he shows himself to be critical of Dante's style (Gilson 2018, 267, n. 76). This led, after a period of partly negative views of the Sommo Poeta culminating in Bembo, to a positive reevaluation of his poetic originality in the second half of the sixteenth century.

#### 3.3.2.2 Asprezza as a Quality in its own Right (Rhetores Graeci, Bembo)

In 1508, the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius published an anthology of ancient Greek rhetorical and poetological texts known today as Rhetores Graeci. Amongst other writings, it features Hermogenes' Perì heureseos, in which a quality of harshness (trachytes), based on semantics, certain figures of speech and rough sounds, is a subcategory of greatness (megethos), one of seven basic 'ideas' or principles. Its neighbouring quality is vehemence (sphrodotes), whereas on the higher level of the seven 'ideas', its principle, greatness, is close to that of graveness (deinotes). From this perspective, harshness can be aggressive, but it remains sublime (Patillon 1988, 112–113). Renaissance authors such as Scaliger, Minturno, Delminio or Bartolomeo Cavalcanti generally choose as Latin or vernacular equivalents for trachytes terms like asperitas or asprezza. Scaliger places asperitas partly in direct opposition to suavitas, rendering it largely equivalent to gravitas (Grosser 1992, 41 and 81).

Gian Giorgio Trissino, in 1529, in the first part of his Poetica, adapts this seven-fold system to his predominantly Aristotelian framework (Huss et al. 2012, 32) and likewise believes that asprezza occupies a space within which both magnificent grandeur (exemplified by the beginning of Dante's Paradiso) and vehement invective exist. Having edited (and translated) the first modern printed version of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia in the very year of publication of his own Poetica (1529), he equates aspects of Hermogenes' trachytes with Dante's 'unkempt words' (yrsute; Trissino 1970, 30–33). He thus paves the way towards a future reappraisal of Dante's specific style, which, however, only came into its own after Bembism had its heyday (to be discussed below).

Another work included in Manutius' Rhetores Graeci was even more influential: On elocution by pseudo-Demetrius of Phalerum. In this text, harshness is decidedly an element of the sublime style. Torquato Tasso took up his view in the second half of the sixteenth century.

But the mainstream of the first half of the century followed Pietro Bembo's aestheticist view in his Prose della volgar lingua (1525), which devalued Dantean harshness. As has been shown in chapters 1.1 and 1.4.3 above, Bembo set up a single authority for verse poetry, Petrarch, (and Boccaccio for prose writing) and decanonized Dante as a writer, who, though strong on doctrine, was weak on elegance, writing as he did about 'base and vile things' with the aid of a partly archaic, latinizing, crude, dirty and ugly vocabulary (Bembo 1989, II, V, 137–139 and II, XX, 175–178). Within the traditional threefold hierarchy of styles, Bembo was interested only in the sublime and the medium registers, all but ignoring the low and the comic. Rough sounding, humble words are thus excluded, whereas harsh sounds of the sublime kind are extolled. Bembo thus avoided the ambiguity of high and low that characterized Dante's poetics of asprezza, moving closer to the line of ps.-Demetrius; it is no coincidence that he eschewed both the term asprezza and Dante's concept of 'hirsute words' (which found its way into print anyway through Trissino only four years after the publication of Bembo's Prose). Instead, Bembo opted for the term grave to cover all techniques of grave and sublime writing, including (noble) consonant clusters (Bembo 1989, II, XVII, 166–169).

Like Dante, Bembo called for a style that oscillated between two basic qualities, but as opposed to Dante's, his were both firmly rooted inside the sphere of classical elegance: poets should move between gravità and piacevolezza (Bembo 1989, II, IX, 145–147), two qualities derived from Cicero (Orator LIV, see Regn 2006, 33). These should be used with a preponderance of gravità in the sublime style, and a stress on the piacevolezza in the medium register, but both should be present in good writing, for the sake of variety. It is important to note that Bembo thus introduced two stylistic tendencies, not three, and that they are linked to the high and the medium genres. In this system, there is simply no third slot for an ugly and rough comical style.

But precisely with his almost exclusive emphasis on the grave character of austere sound (following ps.-Demetrius), Bembo at the same time, perhaps unwillingly, opens up a future option for a new appreciation of harshness as an aesthetic quality, which, as will become apparent, will also paint Dante in a new light in the second half of the sixteenth century. At the same time, Bembo's idea of a mixture of gravità and piacevolezza removes gravitas somewhat from the discussion of style registers. It transforms it, instead, into an aesthetic quality within a harmonious interplay, which, in Bembo's opinion, Petrarch (rather than Dante) masters particularly well. From this perspective, aesthetic qualities can become author-specific rather than system-related, and this, too, is later taken up in favour of Dante.

#### 3.3.2.3 Asprezza and the Sublime: Giovanni Della Casa, Torquato Tasso

With Bembo, the stylistically low version of harshness becomes all but invisible, and this constellation leads to a new practice of sublime asperitas in the middle of the sixteenth century. This happens not just in epic or tragic writing, but also in the higher forms of lyric poetry, not least because the latter genre often takes the lead in the development of poetics in the Italian High Renaissance. The main exponent of this new stylistic tendency is Giovanni Della Casa, whose innovations in lyric poetry have been justly characterised as a programme of complication and new graveness, especially for the sonnet (Schulz-Buschhaus 1991).

Della Casa's poetics of graveness has often been described without reference to Dante, but Dante does have a role in it. In fact, Della Casa seems to be one of the first readers of Dante to spot the cyclical character of the four petrose, as can be seen in a group of four sonnets on Livia Colonna, written "ad istanza" of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Rime 41–44, Della Casa 1997, 130–137). This little cycle can be read as an answer to Dante's four canzoni, as it is full of 'stony' vocabulary (Scarpa 2003, 141–144). The word material in question is, to be sure, derived from the name of the lady ('column') and thus harks back to Petrarch's network of semantic systems derived from the name of Laura. But Della Casa makes the most of the harsh potential of his rocks, stones and marbles by combining them with lexical Dantisms and clusters of consonants. A brief example from the first of the sonnets may suffice. This is the sirma, which features a hiatus ("pioggia asprezza") in the middle of a poetologically charged final verse on the accretion of harshness:

Qual dura quercia in selva antica, od elce frondosa in alto monte, ad amar fôra, o l'onda che Caribdi assorbe e mesce, tal provo io lei, che più s'impetra ogniora quanto io più piango, come alpestra selce che per vento e per pioggia asprezza cresce. (Della Casa 1993, 130–131) Each of the four sonnets features the word aspro in a prominent position, and in the middle of Della Casa's sonnet cycle we are told, in a similarly poetologically-charged verse as the one quoted above, that the effect of all this is grave (Della Casa 1993, 133). These are sublime petrose, avoiding as they do any possible low, erotic or comic overtones. They are thus quite in line with the univocally 'high' idea of harshness prevalent since Bembo and the Rhetores Graeci (Mehltretter 2022). This situation opens up the possibility of looking at Dantean harshness from a different point of view, and it is not by coincidence that contemporaries such as Mario Colonna compare Della Casa with Dante (Afribo 2001, 16). Della Casa's interest in Dante is further witnessed by his annotations in an edition of the Commedia from 1529 (Scarpati 1987b).

Torquato Tasso admired Della Casa's graveness and elaborated a theory of styles that could account for the presence of sublime matter and style in sonnets. But in his own lyrical output Tasso tends to stick to a medium register and even to stress the mellow sweetness he associates with the semantics and rhetoric of lyrical poetry (Regn 1987c, 220). In fact, in a sonnet written in answer to Della Casa's Colonna cycle, "Io mi credea sotto un leggiadro velo" (Tasso 1976, I, 79–80), he 'downgrades' the harsh sounds and the corresponding semantics to a mere admixture in the interest of variety and decidedly 'lyricizes' the content matter taken over from Della Casa (Regn 1987c, 88; Mehltretter 2022). For Tasso, asprezza is a key element of the sublime register, suitable for epic and tragedy rather than for lyric poetry.

In his Discorsi del poema eroico, Tasso describes the means and methods of sublime harshness in minute detail. Alliterations, hiatus, enjambments and clusters of consonants all contribute to asprezza and hence to grandeur and a majesty of style. Della Casa and Dante are past masters of this kind of writing, though in the case of the latter Tasso is unsure whether to classify these effects as "artificio o caso" (Tasso 1977, II, 316).

Harsh sounds have thus become unambiguous signs of sublime power; since Bembo, their low or comic side has become a marginal phenomenon. In this situation, Dante's roughness can generally be understood as a form of stylistic graveness comparable to similar qualities in other art forms; the cross-media reception of Dante at the end of the sixteenth century benefitted from this.

#### 3.3.2.4 Dante and Harshness in the Arts (Marenzio, Michelangelo, Vasari, Alessandro Guarini)

As stated at the beginning of this chapter, Luca Marenzio's 1599 book of madrigals, his ninth and last, opens with a setting of the first stanza of Dante's canzone "Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro," thus establishing asprezza as the dominant quality of the entire work. In light of the shifts in poetics and of the reception of Dante in the High and Late Renaissance detailed above, this can be explained as a choice of grave, complex and sublime aesthetic options quite in contrast to some of the cruder aspects of Dante's poem. Marenzio's music echoes this reading of Dante by a decidedly 'difficult' style full of dissonances and chromaticism (Fabbri 1999; Gerbino 2018). As early as 1556, Carlo Lenzoni had compared Dante's harshness to the use of dissonance in music (Lenzoni 1556, 59). The rest of Marenzio's madrigal cycle favours the graver, more sublime works of Petrarch (such as the double sestina RVF 332, the Triumphus Cupidinis and the famous sonnet 35, "Solo e pensoso"), which stand out from the more harmonious notes generally associated with this poet, and pairs them with somewhat lighter versions of similar themes by contemporaries (Mehltretter 2020a, 221–223). Dante thus becomes a champion of sublime asprezza, as opposed to the mellow sweetness of mainstream Petrarchist love poetry.

There is an interesting parallel to this in the discussion on the fine arts, especially painting. Thus in 1553 Giovan Battista Gelli compares Dante to Michelangelo on the one hand, and the elegant love poets (like Petrarch and the Petrarchists) to Flemish landscape painters on the other (Gelli 1887, I, 361). Ludovico Dolce, in many ways a Bembist, pairs Dante with Michelangelo, and Petrarch with Raphael, in his Dialogo della pittura of 1557, but in the end both Michelangelo and Raphael must cede to Titian. His dialogue character 'Aretino' ascribes to Michelangelo a 'terrible' quality, especially as regards his rendering of the human form (Dolce 1557, 48r.; Gilson 2018, 348). Dante and Michelangelo can therefore be seen as parallel in that they eschew mellow sweetness, and even though Dolce does not pronounce himself in favour of this choice, in other contexts it could be valued as an achievement.

This is especially true of Vasari, who, in his Vite, crowns Michelangelo above all other artists. The adjective used by Dolce's 'Aretino' to describe Michelangelo's renderings of human bodies, terribile, and its noun, terribilità, is used with positive connotations in Vasari's life of Michelangelo, e.g. for the character of Jonah on the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel (Vasari 1568, VI, 48). It denotes the intensity of Michelangelo's depiction of the body and its affects, but it can even be extended to art in general, as in "la terribilità dell'arte" (Vasari 1568, VI, 74) as opposed to shallow sweetness. Vasari does not use the term asprezza in this context, but he praises certain statues of antiquity, excavated a few years before, for their balance of asprezza and dolcezza (Vasari 1568, IV, 6–7).

If terribilità and asprezza are both in their own ways opposites of different kinds of (positive or negative) dolcezza, then Vasari's Michelangelo is definitely close to the harsh side of Dante. And indeed, Vasari links the two artists several times in his text. He praises Michelangelo for achieving, in the Sixtine Chapel, what Dante attributes to God's own art in Purgatory, thus ascribing the same ideals of forceful characterization to both of them (Vasari 1568, VI, 70–71). He stresses Michelangelo's familiarity with Dante's works (Vasari 1568, VI, 73) and identifies Dante as Michelangelo's model for his poetry (Vasari 1568, VI, 111).

In Vasari's remarks, then, while the concept of asprezza itself is of marginal importance, the notion of a parallelism between Michelangelo and Dante because of their grave and sometimes disturbing force, which avoids any pleasing smoothness, creates a framework in which Dante's austerity can be perceived as a quality in its own right. At a later moment in the ongoing discussion on the arts with reference to Dante's style, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, this body of thought is once again explicitly linked to the term asprezza.

In 1610, the younger Guarini, Alessandro, publishes in Ferrara a dialogue of the title Il farnetico savio ovvero il Tasso. In it, 'Tasso' is confronted with the Bembists' accusations against Dante, which he rejects with some familiar arguments: Dante uses harsh and low expressions where they are most able to convey the subject vividly. However, his repertoire also includes harmonic and euphonious phrases, for example in the Paolo and Francesca episode of Inferno V (Guarini 1610, 13–15).

The discussion becomes more interesting at the moment when stylistic alternatives are put forward, here with regard to both painting and music. As far as painting is concerned, Michelangelo is now an old master, but in his tradition stands "Tintoretto, Michelangelo de' nostri tempi." What remains, however, is the parallelism with Dante: "Alle figure di costui possiamo noi con nuova similitudine agguagliar i versi di Dante." Guarini's 'Tasso' also goes into Michelangelo's mode of representation, which brings out the hardness of the muscles; but he is not repelled by this, as the dialogue character of 'Aretino' in Dolce's earlier text was. Rather, this powerful version of the body is now an aesthetic choice more than equal to Raphael's loveliness (Guarini 1610, 25–26).

Michelangelo, Tintoretto and Dante are exponents of the forceful, sometimes negligent, brushstroke or verse and of a certain violence of emotion, whereas Raphael and Petrarch work diligently on the finesse and grace of their art (Guarini 1610, 26–27).

This comparison works for music just as well, as there are composers who aim more at elegant loveliness, and others who espouse harshness in the interest of mimesis:

il Petrarca è somigliante a quel Musico, il quale ne' suoi figurati componimenti con la dolcezza, e con la leggiadria, va spargendo il diletto, studiandosi sovra ogn'altra cosa di non offender l'orecchie, con isquisita soavità lusingandole; Dante poi a quell'altro è molto simile, che il suo diletto va rintracciando per altri vestigi; per ciò che vuol egli derivarlo dalla imitatione di quelle parole, ch'egli imprende a figurare con le sue note. E per conseguir questo suo fine, non teme durezza, non fugge asprezza, ne schifa l'istessa dissonanza, contra l'arte artificiosa (Guarini 1610, 13).

The asprezza of dissonance is, of course, the main analogy between Dante's canzone and its musical setting by Marenzio, which was the point of departure of this chapter. From Guarini's perspective, this harshness is a means of imitatione, but, interestingly, its stronger forms seem to be hard to reconcile with the rules of art. It is therefore "contra l'arte artificiosa", a new art that departs from the rules of tradition or at least neglects them. Dante

non teme di metter mano à voci dure, non usate, ed istrane; ne schiffa egli alle volte concetti umili, e molte fiate, a' gusti troppo delicati, stomachevoli, per meglio esprimere col mezzo di essi i più nobili, e gravi (Guarini 1610, 24).

– and he thus arrives at a new form of poetry:

la grandezza di lui nasce principalmente dal essersi sottratto con nuova sorte di poesia alla catena di certe regole, ed alla strettezza di alcune leggi. (Guarini 1610, 12).

The innovative gesture and the idea of breaking rules in this text are part of the new baroque aesthetics of the early seventeenth century. But the idea of a violent, harsh and somehow neglected art will not immediately bear fruit. Only much later, in the eighteenth century, a new generation of readers of Dante will rediscover this side of the Florentine poet and rethink their own neoclassical poetics on the base of it (see below, 3.3.4).

#### 3.3.2.5 Michelangelo and Dante

As has been shown in 3.3.2.4, comparing Michelangelo to Dante was commonplace from the middle of the sixteenth century onward. Varchi, Giambullari, Vasari, Condivi and others tried to find arguments in favour of a deep affinity between the two artists, but in reality had little of substance to offer apart from the fact of Michelangelo's love of Dante as such (Armour 1998, 141–143).

A strong religious spirit can probably be attributed to both artists (Barolsky 1996) – or, at the very least, Michelangelo's adherence to the brand of Neoplatonism projected on Dante by Landino and his school (Friedrich 1964, 353) seemed to unite them in a common religious vision in the eyes of their Cinquecento beholders. Yet only in a very few cases can one detect details of Michelangelo's representation of Divine subjects that could derive from Dante, such as the figure of Haman in the Sistine Chapel, who is shown crucified (as in Alighieri 2007, Purgatorio XVII, 25–27) rather than hanged, as in the Bible (Armour 1998, 144). As Peter Armour (1998) has shown, in many other cases, even where one would expect Michelangelo to follow Dante closely, there are strong differences in the way characters and events of the afterlife, the Last Judgment or Biblical History are rendered. Friedrich (1964, 355) stresses the difference between Dante's security in his own faith and Michelangelo's striving for a religious vision which he attained only in the asceticism of his old age. According to Aurenhammer (2018), Michelangelo took up elements from Dante, but transformed them consciously for his own purposes.

As regards their conception of nature and the calling of art and the artist, the two masters do have something in common, but even here, the differences are more interesting than the analogies. Thus, Dante stresses the transience of human art and its glory (Alighieri 2007, Purgatorio XI, 103–106), whereas Michelangelo, at least in a typically hyperbolic love lyric, claims to celebrate his lady in a way that will remain constant for a thousand years (Buonarroti 1960, Nr. 239, Armour 1998, 154). Nevertheless, for both artists, art is divine. As Peter Armour points out, the difference lies, as it were, in the direction of movement of their conceptions of art: for Dante, art follows God's daughter, nature (Alighieri 2007, Inferno XI, 97–105) and thus can be seen as 'descended' from God; for Michelangelo, "painting and sculpture are imitations of nature which strive upwards to conquer the transience of the natural world in the attempt to detect the Ideal Beauty dispersed throughout natural creation" (Armour 1998, 167).

In his poetry, even though Michelangelo's concetti and some of his rhetorical devices are of an eclectic Petrarchist kind (Friedrich 1964, 330; Armour 1998, 154–158), he does differ from mainstream Petrarchism stylistically – but this difference, while it has a strong anticlassicist bent (Friede 2016), cannot easily be described as Dantism. According to Hugo Friedrich (1964, 331), Petrarch remains the dominant outward stylistic model for Michelangelo, but at the same time he tries to distance himself from Petrarch's smooth elegance. Even if he does not actually imitate Dante in order to do this, he uses laconisms, cutting sounds, and eccentric metaphors reminiscent of the Petrose.

At the same time, Michelangelo's poems are more abstract than the verse of either Trecento masters. Even in Michelangelo's lower, burlesque register, there is almost never any sensual descriptive detail; just as he conceives sculpture as the art of taking away superfluous material, so can he be seen to reduce his lyrical discourse, from one version of a poem to the next, to a backbone of terse, hard speech (Friedrich 1964, 338). Few readers would judge Michelangelo's poetry to be unsuccessful, but there has often been perceived a sense of fight against the linguistic material, sometimes ending in a stalemate (Friedrich 1964, 338).

The fact that many of Michelangelo's poems are unfinished has been commented upon in various ways: it may be due to the occasional nature of Michelangelo's writing as part of his "Life on Paper" (Barkan 2010), which almost never seems to have been undertaken with a view to publication, or Michelangelo may have believed that the thought he wanted to express required no further elaboration (Friedrich 1964, 343). This phenomenon has been compared to the famous non finito of some of his sculptures and may even have a spiritual background in the theology of Divine grace (Friede in course of print; see also Prodan 2014, Moroncini 2017) – but this is a religious concern that links Michelangelo more to contemporary confessional debates than to the world of Dante (see Ott/Aurenhammer/Föcking/Nova in course of print).

It has been claimed that Michelangelo tries to break up Petrarchism in search of a deeper pathos (Ferroni 2012, 144–145; Bruscagli 2005, 84), perhaps similar to Dante's. Sometimes he develops a typically Petrarchist image like that of fire in a much more serious way than in Petrarch and his school (Friedrich 1964, 352), even giving it a Dantesque hue by using it as a symbol of poetic invention (Fenzi 2020, 402; Masi 2009a, 2009b, 2015). But in most of the (few) cases in which Michelangelo takes up lines or syntagms from the Comedy, he alters them in a more dialogical, distancing manner (Armour 1998, 161). Rarely can this be seen as modelling the new text on Dante's.

An interesting exception can be discerned in the madrigal "Ora in sul destro, ora in sul manco piede" (Buonarroti 1960, Nr. 162), in which Michelangelo asks his lady (Vittoria Colonna) a theological question about the degrees of happiness in Paradise. Even though, as Peter Armour (1998, 162) pointed out, "someone who knew the Paradiso" would have no need to ask this question, it is still a very Dantesque gesture, as 'Dante' first puts it to the inhabitants of the heaven of the moon and then suggests it silently to Beatrice, who answers it at length in Paradiso IV, 18–48. In both cases, the poet's lady is presented as a spiritual teacher, which is no common motif in early modern poetry.

Apart from such analogies and differences in content matter, one of the most striking characteristics of Michelangelo's poetry is its consequent avoidance of a stylized Trecento Tuscan as advocated by Bembo, and even though this does distance Michelangelo from Petrarch and the Petrarchists, it also results in a remarkable linguistic difference between his and Dante's language. Even his "lessico realistico ed espressivo" (Fenzi 2020, 383) and his characteristic way of mixing styles (Friedrich 1964, 378) are in reality quite different from Dante's. Perhaps one could say that eschewing the smoothness of the dominant models and working, instead, on the raw material of spoken Tuscan (Marazzini 2015, 129; Nencioni 1965), even beating it into strange and difficult syntactic forms, constitutes for Michelangelo a very personal form of expressive harshness, very different from Dante's asprezza in sound, but similar in spirit.

#### 3.3.3 Cruelty. Tasso's Oblique Glance at Dante's Asprezza (Giulia Lombardi)

This chapter will follow Tasso's reaction to Dantesque harshness into the realm of epic poetry, as opposed to his theoretical discussion and lyrical avoidance of it detailed in 3.3.2.3. As discussed in the previous chapters, in the middle of the debate on Dante during the sixteenth century, the role of asprezza as a stylistic feature becomes central. In the following pages it will be argued that Dante's use of harshness as seen by sixteenth century theorists seems to relate to another term, which is not at the core of the discussions about literature and Dante in the sixteenth century and yet affords a specific poetological value that should not be underestimated: cruelty. As will be seen, Tasso 'translates' the harshness of Dante's lyrical petrose into epic cruelty.

The etymology of the Italian word crudele, which is almost synonymous with crudo, though less semantically flexible (for the slight differences between these two adjectives, see Pasquini 1970a and Pasquini 1970b), derives from Latin crudus, which means 'bloody, bleeding' and, in extension, 'uncooked, raw.' In its metaphorical significance and common lyrical use, the noun crudeltà and the adjective crudele mainly refer to love and qualify the struggles while being in love (regardless of whether this love is requited or not) as well as the codified feminine behaviour within the courtly game of love.

The Dantean canzoni known as petrose show a close link between asprezza and crudeltà. In fact, the terms crudeltà or crudele appear in almost all of the petrose where they serve to qualify the stubborn beloved lady, except for Al poco giorno ed al gran cerchio d'ombra. In Io son venuto al punto della rota, the adjective crudele qualifies the lady ("questa crudel che m'è data per donna", Alighieri 2011, v. 26, 459), who is referred to metaphorically as a "crudele spina" (Alighieri 2011, v. 49, 460), a painful stitch in the poet's heart. Similarly, in Così nel mio parlar vogli'esser aspro ("più natura cruda", Alighieri 2011, v. 4, 495; "la crudele che 'l [mio cuor] squatra", Alighieri 2011, v. 54, 496) and in Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna, in which the lady appears as the personification and catalyst of all cruelties (Alighieri 2011, v. 6, 485: "d'ogni crudelità si fece donna", "In lei s'accoglie [. . .] di tutta crudeltate il freddo", Alighieri 2011, v. 38, 486). Therefore, the theme of the petrose is not merely the poet's struggle to win a merciless lady, but

also her ruthless manner of not requiting the poet's love, an attitude which triggers his discursive asprezza.

Of all four poems, Così nel mio parlar vogli'esser aspro is the one with a particularly pronounced programmatical character due to the poet's stylistic and performative intention expressed from the first verse onwards. It ends on a figura etymologica of the verb vendicare ("vendicherei", v. 73, 497; "vendicar", v. 77), culminating in the last word of the last verse, with the noun vendetta (Alighieri 2011, v. 83, 497) directed at the lady. The 'revenge' imagined by the poet is the climax of his asprezza; the final dispute imagined in the last stanzas does not take place between the poet and Amor, but rather between the poet and the lady.

In the petrose, love ceases to be a courtly discursive game and is, instead, presented as a ruthless, exasperating battle. Consequently, the style and imagery used by the poet as a reaction to the lady's cruel attitude would be more appropriate to an epic poem than to a (love) lyric. In fact, non-metaphorical cruelty is an epic theme in Dante's Inferno in particular, in which the family of terms crudeltà, crudo/crudele and crudelmente occurs quite often (Cranston 1968) – to the point of being its "quasi parola dominante" (Pasquini 1970a), with a prevalent recurrence in the prominent canto 33, in which Dante visits Antenòra and meets the nobleman Ugolino della Gherardesca. The latter will tell Dante about his death by starvation, which is defined "cruda" ("come la morte mia fu cruda", Inf. 33, 19, Alighieri 2007, 983).

The link between harshness and cruelty in the sixteenth century, especially in the context of the debate on Dante, is very much of a stylistic nature. Crudeltà is often listed along with other terms of the semantic field of terribility, becoming a sort of synonym for asprezza. For example, while talking about harsh consonants like R, S and Z in his Difesa di Dante, Carlo Lenzoni asserts that the asprezza of a word depends on the presence of those letters, qualified as "crude" (Lenzoni 1556, 127–128). When discussing asprezza, Gian Giorgio Trissino, in a Dante quotation, mentions that words that are rather "irsute" contribute to the "vehemenzia" (Trissino 1529, VII and passim) of the discourse, which goes along with its asprezza (see 3.3.2.1 above for the connexion between Dante's theory of hirsute words in De vulgari eloquentia and the question of harshness).

Torquato Tasso will take up the question of harshness and cruelty as well as the 'harsh' version of the battle of love presented in Dante's Petrose and insert the whole complex in a decidedly epic, stylistically elevated frame, with a pointed reference to Dante and, at the same time, to the romanzo tradition of female knights in armour, who engage both in battles of love and in real battles.

Tasso's comments about Dante's oeuvre as well as Dante's influence on Tasso's oeuvre have largely been discussed by critics (Fubini/Negri 1970; Nolan 1985). It is noteworthy, however, how Tasso's use of Dantean asprezza within the Gerusalemme liberata evolves towards a representation of cruelty.

In a passage in the last canto of Gerusalemme liberata we follow the perspective of Soldano, and the narrator asserts that the war between the Saracens and the Christians, which has finally led to the victory of the Christians and to the deliverance of Jerusalem from the Saracens, was as an expression of the "aspra tragedia dello stato umano" (Tasso 1979, XX, 73, 476, emphasis mine). This utterance can be read both metonymically with regard to mankind in general and poetologically, as a justification of the text, which is coming to its end in these stanzas: not only are the battles between Christians and Saracens harsh in their literary representation, they also stand for the human condition, the 'real' harsh tragedy that Tasso's narrator describes to the very end in canto XX.

On a poetological level, the harsh tragedy was represented in the previous cantos through the comprehensive use of categories constitutive of the tragic genre (such as hamartia, cf. Regn 2014), the display of feelings and (as regards the dramatic nature of tragedy) by mentions of the aspect of mise en scène in some passages (e.g. XII, 54).

However, the more brutal scenes detailed within Gerusalemme liberata are chiefly characterized not by theatrical vocabulary, but by a use of evidenzia (Kemmann 1996), which is, according to Tasso, better suited to the epic genre than to other genres:

Si [. . .] dee usare l'ordine naturale di parlare [. . .] è in lei [i.e. narrazione] richiesta quella probabilità e quella che da' Latini è detta evidenzia, da' Greci energia; da noi si direbbe chiarezza o espressione non men propriamente; ma è quella virtù che ci fa quasi veder le cose che si narrano, la quale nasce da una diligentissima narrazione, in cui niuna cosa sia tralasciata. (Tasso 1977, 363).

The epic poem Gerusalemme liberata thus refers to several consolidated literary genres and plays with some of their characteristics and boundaries (Günter 1986; Stierle 1986; Regn 2014). Within this framework, Tasso pays tribute to Dante Alighieri not only by a conspicuous use of evidenzia similar to Dante's featuring of it in the Commedia, but also by evoking the specific constellation of asprezza found in Dante's petrose (Gibbons 2000). What is striking is that within the thematic complex contained in them, Tasso chooses to focus particularly on the cruelty of the beloved person. In the Dantean canzoni, this cruelty is in fact the reason why the poet expresses himself with harshness. Tasso takes Dante's lyrical setting apart and reassembles it in a specifically epic manner, in which cruelty has a central role and is, in fact, exploited on all its levels of significance.

It is true that Tasso's theoretical writings about the epic poem lack a targeted analysis of cruelty, as opposed to the remarkably specific treatment of asprezza as a signal for grandezza, gravità and "un non so che di magnifico e di grande" (Discorsi del poema eroico, V, in Tasso 1977, 316–317). But while discussing asprezza and mentioning the use of it in Dante's Commedia, Tasso recalls the episode of Ugolino: within the epical sublime, he singles out a particularly cruel example, and (as stated above) one that explicitly uses the adjective cruda for the manner of the count's death. This may not be a poetics of cruelty, but it does show a suggestive conceptual vicinity, and despite the lack of a true theoretical discussion of it, a look at Gerusalemme liberata shows that Tasso's prominent epic poem is based on a complex examination of the idea of cruelty. This amplifies what David Gibbons, addressing Tasso's use of asprezza, has defined as a "general strategy of re-literalizing lyric metaphor" (Gibbons 2000, 94–95). Topoi of lyric imagery such as a war-like love (found in Dante but also in other poets) are translated into literal narrative and inserted into the context of the epic poem (Gibbons 2000, 86).

This is at its most obvious in the famous and intense duel in which Tancredi and Clorinda engage in canto XII, in which the semantic levels of love and war intermingle and display forms of cruelty in which both the traditional lyric aspects of the 'cruelty of love', as well as cruelty as a mere act of violence converge, and which will be treated below.

"Ahi quanto è crudo nel ferire" (Tasso 1979, III, 19, 55) – this is what Erminia responds when questioned by Aladino about Tancredi in canto III of Gerusalemme liberata while both characters observe the beginning of the first battle between the Christian and the Saracen troops from a hill. Erminia's utterance – as well as the whole of the canto – plays a central role to a reading of the poem that takes the perspective of cruelty into account.

Allusions to cruelty within the Gerusalemme liberata relate primarily to scenes of violence: coarse brutality can be observed in battle scenes when the Christian and Saracen armies clash (in cantos III, VII, IX, XI, XIX, XX). More subtle violence is inflicted in the duels, which are essential to the poem's architecture in many respects (in cantos VI, XII, XIX, XX). Finally, the cruelty of love, which involves the main female and male characters of the poem and pits them against each other (in cantos VI, XVI, XX). This last aspect proves an essential connecting element to the romanzo tradition and with some lyrical paradigms like the one in Dante's petrose. There is an important nuance, however: in Tasso's epic poem, it is rarely the lady who is cold-hearted and therefore cruel, but rather the male characters, the undiscussed heroes of the epic action, Rinaldo and Tancredi. Both are embroiled in impossible love affairs with Saracen women; these liaisons reflect the war in which the Christians are involved against the Saracens. In both kinds of battle, the winner will be the combatant who acts more cruelly. The adverb crudelmente is only uttered within the poem to refer to Rinaldo (Tasso 1979, V, 45, 107), making him one of the cruellest characters in the poem. In fact, Rinaldo, the knight who would seem better suited than Tancredi to representing the romanzo hero (Güntert 1986a, 60–62), experiences an increase in strength and power over the course of the poem whose climax undoubtedly comes in the last canto when the Christians celebrate their victory over the Saracens. Here, Rinaldo plays a key role, acting far beyond the limits of accepted chivalric behaviour and therefore acting cruelly. Excited by the imminent victory, Rinaldo feels a thirst for blood, which leads him to perform acts that are both horrible and incredible:

Poich'eccitò de la vittoria il gusto l'appetito del sangue e de le morti Nel fero vincitore, egli fe' cose incredibili, orrende e mostruose. (Tasso 1979, XX, 54, 471)

Rinaldo's cruelty is judged by the narrator as coarse, brutal, monstrous. Hence his thirst for blood is gratuitous. But Rinaldo is also a cruel lover in the traditional sense. Involved in a love affair with Armida, he leaves her to return to war and to his epic destiny; the woman, who is herself a victim of "crudo Amor" (Tasso 1979, IV, 92, 94), will then address him as "crudele" (Tasso 1979, XVI, 44, 365 and passim) and begin to develop a desire for revenge ("[. . .] io vuo' vendetta", Tasso 1979, XVII, 46, 384). It is interesting to recall here that David Gibbons has compared precisely Rinaldo to Dante's stubborn "donna Pietra" (cf. Gibbons 2000, 96).

It has to be taken into account, however, that Rinaldo's behaviour towards Armida opens up a path of salvation to her. The cruelty of love transforms her from a diabolic femme fatale into his 'handmaiden' and thereby into an ancilla Domini (XX, 136). Violence and even cruelty thus motivate or energize a remarkable change of character and ethos in Armida. On a theological level, this can be read as a dramatization of the possibility, but also the difficulty of repentance and reversion afforded to sinners; on a poetological level, it seems to be one part of Tasso's answer to the path of conversion Ariosto sketches in the Orlando furioso for his character Ruggiero, the other, 'tragic' half being the fate of Clorinda at the hands of Tancredi.

In fact, despite Rinaldo being addressed openly as crudele, it proves even more fruitful in the context of cruelty to observe the character of Tancredi and the way he deals with cruel acts, as reported by the narrator as well as by other characters. Beside the popular and widely commented cantos VI and IX, a canto that gains a central role in this regard is, as previously asserted, the third one, in which the Christian paladin enjoys his entrance to the stage of war. At this point in the narration, the first battle is under way between the Christians and the Saracens, reported by the narrator from two perspectives: from the midst of the battle and from the hill where the emir Aladino and Erminia observe the battle from afar. In Erminia's utterance about Tancredi ("Ahi quanto è crudo nel ferire! a piaga/ ch'ei faccia, erba non giova od arte maga", Tasso 1979, III, 19, 55) the ambivalence of the concept of cruelty is displayed. Cruelty is to be understood here, on the one hand, in a figurative sense and refers both to Erminia's unrequited love and to the literary tradition of the piaga d'amore, which had been the cause of the poet's asprezza in Dante's petrose. That being said, on the other hand, cruelty is also meant here in its literal sense: the fact that the "buon Tancredi" (Tasso 1979, III, 16, 55) is presented as a ferocious soldier. This latter one is, of course, the meaning conveyed to Aladino in the dialogue, whereas the metaphorical meaning is Erminia's secret, made available to the reader by the context. On the metaphorical level, Erminia assumes the role of the poet in Dante's petrose: rejected in love, she feels torn; Tancredi acts towards her in the way that the stubborn lady did towards Dante's lyrical subject.

Erminia's double meaning in her scene with the emir shows that, contrary to Rinaldo, whose cruelty is presented either literally or as a metaphor, Tancredi is the centre of a multi-layered construct of cruelty. Tancredi is embroiled in love stories with two Saracen women: Erminia and Clorinda. The relationship with Clorinda is highly complex and its complexity culminates in the well-known emotional duel that plays out in canto XII. A first anticipation of this duel is evoked in canto III, when Clorinda and Tancredi meet for the second time and duel for the first time – with Erminia watching over them from the hill. Canto III is thus of central importance to the poem's structure with regard to cruelty because all layers of metaphorical and literal cruelty meet here: Erminia's looks and feelings directed at Tancredi (without being reciprocated); Tancredi and Clorinda exchanging looks, feelings and swords. The swords announce the death of Clorinda by Tancredi's hand that will take place in the duel of canto XII. This first duel, far away from the battlefields where both armies are fighting, carries the same erotic semantic that will characterise the duel in canto XII (Regn 2014; 55; Güntert 1986a, 59; Zatti 1998, 168). In this sense, the third canto lays the foundations for a structure that will develop the different threads of cruelty within the poem.

Canto III is also important because of the presence of Argante, who violently kills here for the first time in the plot. In the final duel between Argante and Tancredi, which will take place in canto XIX, the crescendo of brutality and the duelling beyond any knightly art ("la pugna ha manco d'arte ed è piú orrenda.", Tasso 1979, XIX, 19, 429) will be particularly striking. Here, Tancredi will leave aside his "pietà" (Regn 2014, 157, n. 70) – or perhaps in this case his overload of pity, purged as he might be by the tragedy of killing Clorinda, which he has lived through. Tasso was in fact a follower of an interpretation of Aristotelian katharsis in the sense of the purgation of an excess of horror and pity (Regn 1983). This time, Tancredi achieves a "sanguigna vittoria" (Tasso 1979, XIX, 27, 431) not in a tragic, but in an epic fashion, yet equally brutal.

The tragic counterpart of this final victory is, as already indicated, the famous duel scene between Tancredi and Clorinda in canto XII. It shows Tancredi's consciously cruel way of fighting and, without his realising it, also his cruelty in love. At the same time, Clorinda is shown as equally violent and, moreover, disdainful with regard to him. The cruelty being disclosed here takes the paradigm of the battle of love and the imagery of Dante's "Così nel mio parlar" to the extreme.

Clorinda, who has only had rather minor appearances within the poem until now, gains a more precise profile as a fighter in canto XI (see comment on the canto in Tasso 2014), when the second terrible battle between the two armies takes place. Cruel herself in canto XI ("[. . .] desiosa di ferire, al varco/la bella arciera i suoi nemici attende", Tasso 1979, XI, 28, 254), she will die in canto XII, the victim of Tancredi's strength and unawareness, but also of her own provocative boastfulness about having burnt the siege tower of the Christians (XII, 61), in a scene that could be seen as the ultimate re-literalisation of the metaphor of cruelty in love within the poem.

On the one hand, the duel with Tancredi, which – similar to their first duel in canto III – takes place far away from a public scene and in the middle of the night, is a culmination of feelings that push both duellists to attempt to outdo each other in their physical brutality and violent emotions. On the other hand, the cruelty of love reaches a dead end: Clorinda and Tancredi are two sides in a love story that could never be fulfilled – and this might be interpreted as cruel enough. Furthermore, Clorinda, who, unlike Tancredi is well aware of the identity of her duellist, is consciously involved in a very subtle game of denial and provocation. Tancredi, on the other hand, cannot express his love to her because he is unaware of her identity; during the duel, he is unable to engage in the love game. This impossibility is amplified through his obsessive pleasure in hurting this Saracen soldier whose identity he does not yet know but whom he does know to be responsible for the burning of the tower ("Vede Tancredi in maggior copia il sangue/ del suo nemico, e [. . .] Ne gode e superbisce", Tasso 1979, XII, 58, 283). His tragic blindness culminates in superbia, which he will later regret. His hamartia in killing Clorinda makes him a tragic hero, guilty of cruelty against the person he loves (Regn 2014).

When, later on, Tancredi enters the magic forest to bury Clorinda, the motif of cruelty will be echoed (Tasso 1979, XIII, 8, 298). Addressed again as "crudel" (Tasso 1979, XIII, 42, 306) by an enchanted cypress, he is reminded of the gravity of his acts and loses control of himself. It is at this moment that the decline of this heroic character begins; the selva as a setting of this scene might be a nod to the opening of Dante's epic poem. It is important to note, however, that just like Dante's, this forest is a realm of evil (until its liberation by Rinaldo). The reflection on Tancredi's cruelty dramatized in it is truthful enough, but at the same time a diabolic machination, which draws Tancredi into the inactivity of the tragically failed, rather than setting him free to fight as an epic hero. Only in the last canto will he regain part of his strength and lose the exaggerated "pietà" of the tragic hero, fight, and collapse exhausted.

Stylistically, Tasso takes up some of the sound qualities of Dantean asprezza, such as a hiatus, mitigated by elision, but exacerbated by a clash of consonants and strong monovocalism, in one of Armida's speeches:

Che fa più meco il pianto? altr'arme, altr'arte io non ho dunque? (Tasso 1979, XVI, 64, 370)

This is the moment in which Armida becomes Rinaldo's enemy, because he has left her to pursue his epic project. Its cacophony marks her failure (without being in the least comic or low), but at the same time menaces a future revenge (foiled by love and repentance in the last canto). In the battle scenes, almost any stanza displays harsh sounds. A good example is this description of the female warrior Gildippe valiantly taking on Altamoro:

Non è chi con quel fero omai s'affronte, né chi pur lunge d'assalirlo accenne. Sol rivolse Gildippe in lui la fronte, né da quel dubbio paragon s'astenne. Nulla Amazone mai su'l Termodonte imbracciò scudo o maneggiò bipenne audace sì, com'ella audace inverso al furor va del formidabil perso. (Tasso 1979, XX, 41, 468)

A very strong rhyme paradigm displays muta cum muta and muta cum liquida (with further consonant clusters within the verses), and several hiatus-like synalephas contribute to the effect of asprezza, but the noble vocabulary, the rhetorical devices and the versi spezzati of the second half firmly root these effects within the sublime style. It is perhaps not by chance that two stanzas further on, Tasso features an allusion to an expression in Dante's Inferno, but whatever harshness may link Tasso to Dante, it is stylistically transposed upwards.13

Tasso's admiration for Dante was known to his contemporaries; the younger Guarini, in his fictitious dialogue Il farnetico savio, explicitly ascribes to the dialogue speaker 'Tasso' an appreciation of Dante's durezza and asprezza (Guarini

The end of the octave reads: "[. . .] che lassi,/ sdegnando, uom che si giaccia, e guardi e passi." (Tasso 1979, XX, 43, 7–8, 468). The allusion is to Inferno III, 51, "Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa" (Alighieri 2007, 86).

1610, 13; see chap. 3.2.4 above). In the Gerusalemme liberata, this esteem is partially shown in his re-functioning of Dante's harshness towards a display of a tragic and an epic representation of cruelty. Thus, Tasso succeeds in adjusting the concept of asprezza in favour of its suitability within the noble genres, while he eschews it for his lyrical production (see above). This strategy might be read as a correction and appropriation of the tradition of asprezza within Tasso's classicist poetics as well as a contribution to dignifying Dante's epic qualities at a time in which the stylistic value of the latter's oeuvre has not yet been fully recognised.

### 3.4 Uncultivated Roughness: Towards a New Appreciation of Dante in the Eighteenth Century (Florian Mehltretter)

During the eighteenth century, new ways of appreciating Dante emerged, but most of them with little regard for stylistic aspects. Rather than discovering new sides to Dante, most critics modified or reversed traditional judgments on the features of his work that were already in focus (Auerbach 1929). Writers of the first, Arcadian phase, and especially Vincenzo Gravina (1708, 126) in his Della ragion poetica, still sought to integrate Dante in a classicist narrative of the kind proposed by early modern authors like Boccaccio (in the 14th book of his Genealogiae Deorum gentilium) or Lilio Gregorio Giraldi (in his 1545 Historiae Poetarum tam Graecorum quam Latinorum Dialogi decem) in that his sublime force is seen as an effect of the divine origins of poetry in general (Mehltretter 2020b, 52). Giambattista Vico, in an unpublished preface to a new Dante edition written around 1730 (and later known as "Giudizio sopra Dante"), elaborates a more secular version of this account, when he compares Dante's archaic strength to Homer's: both benefit from a coincidence of personal genius with an early stage of development in the history of their respective civilizations, when the fresh soil of culture is as yet fertile, as opposed to the tired, sterile later phases. This state of history is also propitious to the historical substance and reliability of their poetry, for before the advent of reflective thinking and, hence, the possibility of manipulating the truth, all poets are trustworthy historians. According to Vico, both Dante and Homer are therefore 'naturally sublime' poets and thus in no need to be taught by scholars of Longinus (Vico 1852, 41–43).

It is this link with the Longinian sublime that becomes productive in the second half of the eighteenth century and which led to a more aesthetically precise appreciation of at least some aspects of Dante's style. In 1769, Saverio Bettinelli

published his treatise, Dell'entusiasmo delle belle arti, which proposed a new brand of classicism (as opposed to this author's own earlier Lettere Virgiliane), privileging the sublime and the terrible (Mehltretter 2020c, 256–261). Poetic creation, according to this view, is based on enthusiasm or furor, and it is the mark of a genius to be able to attain to aesthetic perfection even in the midst of great emotional turmoil (Bettinelli 1769, 51).

Having read Longinus, Boileau, Addison and Burke, but disagreeing with them in some respects, Bettinelli developed his own theory of the sublime as of a terrible experience that shakes the soul. It is often triggered by the presence of natural phenomena, but also by mere thoughts of tombs, darkness, silence and such. This can likewise be achieved by art, and in this context, Bettinelli mentions Dante's Ugolino (Inferno XXXII and XXXIII) as an example (Bettinelli 1769, 122–123). The Ugolino episode is in fact one of the two most widely read parts of the entire Comedy in the nineteenth century (the other being the section on Paolo and Francesca in Inferno V).

In his conception of sublime heroes, Bettinelli (1769, 238) likewise focused on the terrible, with a new preference for grand, violent villains, brought to life and, especially, to form by the heroic, rapturous genius of the poet. With this idea of a strong, uncontrolled enthusiasm that nevertheless results in faultless form, Bettinelli faced a dilemma that has existed since Renaissance Platonism, between the idea of classical perfection and the disorder that might be associated with poetic rapture. In order to bridge this gap, he linked the seemingly inexplicably perfect and tasteful products of enthusiasm to a poetics akin to the Renaissance concept of sprezzatura, and thus a specifically aesthetic approach to irregularity:

Un non so che di selvaggio e d'incolto, come in Dante; dello sregolato e capriccioso, come nell'Ariosto; il feroce e lo smisurato in Tintoretto. (Bettinelli 1769, 90)

Dante's allegedly wild and uncultivated roughness is thus presented as an aesthetic quality in its own right, ennobled by the je-ne-sais-quoi formula sometimes used by Tasso to describe stylistic effects such as the sublime (Tasso 1977, II, 316). It is here paired with the seemingly irregular (or at any rate non-Aristotelian) poetics of Ariosto and the emotional 'ferocity' of Tintoretto, who is said to eschew classicist measure.

Thus, as early as in the middle of the eighteenth century, Dante is chosen as champion of a new poetics, which contained many elements later to be developed by the Romantics. It is important to note, however, that this new reading of Dante took up some key terms of Renaissance criticism, not just the concept of furor poeticus or of a partly Longinian sublime, but also the idea that Dante's rough style has its very own forcefulness and sublimity.

Angela Oster

## 4 Benvenuto Cellini as a Paradigm of Para-classicism in the Cinquecento

### 4.1 Introductory remarks

Benvenuto Cellini is a paradigmatic figure of what will be termed Renaissance para-classicism in these pages, as he represents the simultaneously classicist and anti-classicist tendencies of that epoch. Cellini's para-classicism represents a hybrid mixture of classicist and non-classicist elements. The latter can be the result of either the effect of decidedly anti-classicist gestures or of a certain disregard for classical norms, or even of the interference of competing classicist allegiances. Even though Cellini was talented in a number of fields – as a musician, as a writer of sonnets, as a fortress engineer, sculptor and goldsmith – he was not a universal artist of the calibre of a Leonardo or Michelangelo. Cellini did not produce comprehensive works comparable to frescoes or panel paintings. Rather, his achievements in the visual arts were analogous to what he practised in his famous Vita as an author: he was a virtuoso of the solitary performance, of the brilliant individual piece (without, however, being an individualist in the modern sense).

### 4.1.1 Reception and state of research

With regard to Cellini's diverse œuvre, critics have mostly concentrated primarily on the following: 1. Exceptional works of visual art, such as the Saliera (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna) and the Perseus (in the front part of the left one of the three arcades of the Loggia dei Lanzi); 2. Cellini's Vita. Literary studies have so far analysed the latter mainly as an early form of the genre of the modern autobiography, although more recently, new approaches to more far-reaching considerations have begun to be presented (above all Pany 2014, as well as Dickhaut 2015).

The 'voids' in Cellini reception and scholarship are striking. Hardly any of Cellini's extensive sculptural works have survived the centuries. This does not mean, however, that they have not survived in other forms. Cellini himself describes some of his works of art that have been lost in his texts, and contemporary sources also confirm that at least some of these works of art existed. In the case of other works mentioned by Cellini, the question remains open as to whether Cellini could have invented them for self-fashioning purposes in his Vita (more on this below). This in no way diminishes their significance for philologists, on the contrary. In contrast to the field of art history, it is precisely the conglomerate of factual and fictional narration in the Vita that challenges literary studies and especially narratology. Because of the numerous descriptions of things and materials in his texts, Cellini is a rich subject for Philological Material Studies (Oster in course of print b). Cellini's technical treatises are texts that have received little attention in literary studies, including the one on the goldsmith's art and on sculpture (I trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura). They have largely been left to other disciplines, which have avoided the eminently literary procedures of these texts (Nova/Schreurs 2003).

#### 4.1.2 Problems and questions

Benvenuto Cellini's texts are anything but easy to categorise, not least because on the one hand they seek a connection to classical models, but, on the other hand, they ostentatiously display a conspicuous anti-classicism. The latter builds on the counter-discursive shock effect of an "Ugly Renaissance" aesthetic (Lee 2013), unsuited to the expectations of the contemporary public, which prevented a text like the Vita from appearing in print during the author's lifetime. Cellini cultivates the role of the 'enfant terrible' by rejecting sectorial restrictions in his art and texts. This is demonstrated, among other things, in his hybrid handling of classical genre systems. With an anti-classicist gesture, he combines autobiography, conversion literature, the structure of a book of Rime, commentaries on his own poems or art theories, thus following a 'pluralising' approach.

The Rime, which have recently appeared in a new edition (Cellini 2014), seem at first glance to be a disparate conglomeration of Petrarchist tradition and contemporary models (Aretino, Michelangelo) and thus modelled on a "theory of the lyric in the plural" (Huss/Mehltretter/Regn 2012). In fact, however, Cellini's lyric production ambitiously aims at a 'different classicism' (Procaccioli 1999a) and has therefore been rather inappropriately characterised with attributes such as "versi brutti sì ma ardenti" (Carrara 1926) or even dilettantism (Maier 1952). For as far as his reference options are concerned, Cellini stages himself as the heir to antique models, which are then counteracted by autoreferential gestures. Thus, he realizes a kind of hyper-classicism, based on anti-classicist tergiversations. Cellini bends the various models of the lyric, the classical canon and conventional patterns into a matrix of para-classicist scrittura. He blends religious madrigal forms with heretical provocations and even stylises the poetic voice of his texts into that of a 'new Christ.' The use of theological discourse and confessional modes of writing, themselves a kind of classicism with respect to their models, enables Cellini to contour an individual exceptionality, which, however, has been incorrectly interpreted as that of a modern, religiously agnostic genius (Goethe 1803).

In addition to the Rime, Cellini's Vita is similarly important for his lyric production, since this text also contains poems and commentaries on them. Cellini's ostentatious self-referencing in the field of lyric poetry is not least the result of an anti-classicist style of writing, which also contaminates the most diverse genres in the field of lyric poetry. The self-congratulatory rhetoric of the lyrical passages of the Vita is more than risky when weighted against the contemporary background and especially its intertextual horizon, as it exaggerates and transcends Petrarch's poetics of gloria with an anti-classicist verve. Cellini's provocative violations of appropriate speech, his straining of decorum and decency have often been excused by his inexperience as an author who was actually a craftsman and goldsmith by trade. This explanation is clearly inadequate and disregards Cellini's poetic talent, the amount of work involved in his writing and the prudent planning undertaken for the printing of the books. That Cellini was merely negligent in his authorial activity has been impressively refuted by the archival research of Dario Trento, who has examined the 'cassette Cellini' (containing meticulously-kept notes, invoices and lists) in the Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence (Trento 1984).

Over the course of the following pages, the para-classicist categories and patterns in individual texts by Cellini (Vita, Rime, treatises) will first be outlined and the problem areas they have then dealt with in further detail. Finally, the Cicalamenti del Grappa, a text by a different author, will be analysed in order to demonstrate the connectivity of the concept of para-classicism in the Cinquecento beyond Cellini.

### 4.2 Para-classicisms in Benvenuto Cellini's texts

#### 4.2.1 Cellini's Vita

When referring to an artist's Vita in Renaissance Italy, Giorgio Vasari and his famous Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti is, inevitably, evoked. The first edition of this work was published in 1550. Vasari's text is not only regarded as the founding text of the field of art history, but also as the literary masterpiece of a practising visual artist. Vasari, the architect of the Uffizi in Florence, presents in the Vite what he considers to be a definitive line-up of the most important artists in Italy. These are, especially in the first edition from 1550, mainly artists who were already dead at the time. To these he adds Michelangelo, and from the second edition published in 1568 onwards, among others, Leonardo and Raphael. At the end of the volume Vasari pays tribute to himself over 42 pages. Vasari can be merited with having historicised art through the creation and introduction of different epochs, thus relativising standards of judgement previously believed to be timeless. In the meantime, specialists on the subject have revealed that Vasari did indeed pass on valuable knowledge in this fashion, but that, at the same time, his opinions were not neutral or unbiased in nature by any means (opinions are, however, controversial, cf. for example Nova 2014 and Belting 1987). In general, scholars believed, even during the Cinquecento itself, that Vasari, in keeping with being a true patriot, preferred Florence (although he also dedicated some of his attention to Rome) over other regions of Italy or, indeed, Europe.

Moreover, not every contemporary artist felt that their work had been adequately acknowledged or represented by Vasari. For example, Vasari wrote almost nothing about the sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, who was quite famous at the time, and when he did, it was in less than flattering terms. He called Cellini "animoso, fiero, vivace, prontissimo e terribilissimo" (Vasari 1857, 185), which in turn led Cellini to insult Vasari, whom he held in low esteem, as a "Giorgetto Vasellaio" ('vase dealer') (Güntert 1986b, 54). The relationship between Vasari and the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, who was also famous at that time, was just as hostile as that between Cellini and Vasari. Bandinelli and Cellini hated each other even more. The dispute between these artists took place mainly at the court of the Tuscan prince Cosimo I de' Medici.

Cellini's Vita is considered one of the first autobiographies of the Renaissance. Although this genre designation will not be dispensed with in the following pages, other models will be brought into play with regard to genre affiliation. It should be noted that it is disputed in research to what extent an author of the Cinquecento could have been able to conform to the pragmatics of a genre that only became truly established in the eighteenth century (Wagner-Egelhaaf 2005). Cellini's 'autobiography' is not unique within the anti-classicist text panorama of the Cinquecento, but it is exceptional. To give a representative example: Girolamo Cardano's De propria vita liber already reveals, through its preference for Latin, that it is not motivated by para-classicist ambition. His (thoroughly interesting) enumerations lack Cellini's narrative verve and the anti-classicist will to openly confront authority or name inconvenient truths. On the contrary, Cardano advises taking the path of least resistance ('choose the part more comfortable by nature'): "In ancipitibus, partem elige natura commodiorem, ut boli exhibitionem, nam si potionem, non licet redire et in ancipiti confunderis nec adeo gravitatem retines." (Cardano 2020, 339).

Cellini's Vita, on the other hand, is relevant for the context of anti-classicism for several reasons. Not least, Cellini's text is a defiant reaction to Vasari's notorious refusal to pay biographical tribute to Cellini. Nevertheless, the Vita is not unique in this function either. His competitor Bandinelli was outraged that his work was not acknowledged in Vasari's first edition of the Vite and therefore immediately started writing his Memoriale in 1552. For other reasons, Michelangelo – who is particularly celebrated in Vasari's Vite – also authorised a biography of his life and work, which was written by (Condivi 1553). Michelangelo apparently saw the need to make additions or even corrections to Vasari's portrayal of his life as an artist. While Bandinelli is at least acknowledged to some degree in Vasari's 1568 edition of the Vite, Cellini counters Vasari's renewed notorious omission of his artistic persona by recounting his life himself, even before the appearance of the second edition of Vasari's work, in a text that was to cause a sensation – albeit long after the author had written it.

Large parts of Cellini's Vita di Benvenuto di Maestro Giovanni Cellini fiorentino, scritta, per lui medesimo were written roughly between 1556 and 1562. The Vita, however, was not printed until 1728, in the edition by Antonio Cocchi (Cellini/Cocchi 1728) in Naples (the indication "Colonia", which is often cited, is incorrect). This edition is defective, which is due to the fact that it was based on an already insufficient, subsequently lost copy of the original manuscript. Translations in other European countries followed in the same century (including the translation into English by Thomas Nugent in 1771 and into German by Goethe in 1795). The original manuscript was considered lost, but resurfaced in 1805 and was then moved to a more secure location in 1825 (the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence) (Codice Mediceo Palatino 2342). On this basis, the first serious edition of the text was printed in 1829 and edited by Francesco Tassi (Cellini/Tassi 1829). Bacci's later edition (Cellini/Bacci 1901) is more philologically accurate. Goethe's version helped the text to gain wider resonance beyond Italy (and within it). We should explicitly speak of a 'version', as although Goethe was very dedicated to his translation, it is very idiosyncratic (cf. chap. 4.3.3). Why Cellini's text was only published posthumously becomes clear relatively quickly when reading the Vita. It was explosive in several respects, a fact which was also clear to the author, who therefore asked Benedetto Varchi for advice on his manuscript (the letter to Varchi of 22 May 1559 gives an explanation; Cellini 1971c, 985–986). The notes on Cellini's life that make up the last parts of the text end in 1562. The ending is abrupt and the manuscript thus most likely remained unfinished. The text was originally conceived by Cellini as a petition to Cosimo I, with whom the artist had fallen out of favour.

Cellini had just completed the Perseus, and this bronze statue catapulted him instantaneously to a position alongside the great Donatello. This is to be taken quite literally, for his Perseus was placed between Michelangelo's David and Donatello's Judith, at the front of the left of the three arcades of the Loggia dei Lanzi, which is still one of the most visited squares in the world (cf. chap. 4.3.1.2). Subsequently, Cellini and Cosimo I could not agree on the fee (on this and other disputes see Trento 1984, 43–51). Cellini once again showed little skill in dealing with his superiors and with the usual power strategies at play at court (Cellini had also previously massively overtaxed the tolerance of François I in France). What can be noted is that in the course of his Vita, Cellini succeeded at first only with difficulty and then hardly at all in expressing his disappointment and latent anger about Cosimo I in a polite fashion. In the end, Cellini states that Cosimo I acted more in the "modo di mercatante che di duca" (Cellini 1971a, 476). This is a side blow to the Medici's descent from the banking and mercantile business. This sentence was then removed from the manuscript of the Vita that is housed in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Two things can be concluded from this: first, that Cellini was well aware that he could not have published his book in its original form, but that (further) self-censorship was necessary. Secondly: the very deletion is likely to be an indication that doubting the honesty of Cellini's accounts, as frequently happens, is perhaps a case of exaggerated scepticism. In fact, Cellini seems to have written things down literally as they came into his head, or, rather, dictated them to his assistant Michele de Goro, as he himself notes in his own hand on the first pages of the manuscript. According to Cellini, speaking at the same time as working in the workshop made it easier for him to work.

Vita di Benvenuto di Maestro Giovanni Cellini fiorentino, scritta, per lui medesimo, in Firenze – is the final title, whereby the "scritta, per lui medesimo" is ambiguous: it can mean 'through himself', but also 'for himself' (cf. Meier 2004, 36–37). Cellini, who was born exactly in the middle of the second millennium, in 1500, was 56 when he began writing. And the wealth of events he describes is exorbitant. Cellini appears in his own narratives as a kind of prodigy of the arts, as well as a great hero and survivor. In the famous Sacco di Roma, for example, Cellini, according to his claim, succeeded in holding off the enemy troops and helping to save the Pope. In these passages, Cellini's text follows in the footsteps of the picaresque novel. In addition, elements of Boccaccio's classic novella – repartee, punchlines, obstacles along the way as well as boldness and determination – characterise the account.

Cellini's sensational escape from Castel Sant'Angelo is particularly famous, where he – from Cellini's point of view: unjustly imprisoned for defamation and slander by Pope Paul III – suffers martyrdom under the worst conditions (with little food, in almost constant darkness, cold and damp). This is especially important in terms of genre history, because Cellini borrows from hagiographies and accounts of the passion of Christ: an act of para-classicist appropriation. However, there are also witty scenes. Cellini is placed in Castel Sant'Angelo under the care of a castellan, Giorgio Ugolini, who is initially benevolent towards Benvenuto. But things change over the course of his imprisonment and the fatal thing, according to Cellini, is that once a year the castellan is seized by a strange form of madness (cf. generally on madness in the Renaissance Oster in course of print a). Among other things, the castellan has a strong need to talk, and Benvenuto makes the mistake of intoning his usual exorbitant laudations about himself in response to the castellan's question as to whether he thinks he can fly. He describes himself as a kind of new Daedalus, ultimately referring to his skills as an artifex. The castellan, however, takes a very different view. He insinuates that Cellini wants to flee, that is, to fly away. This leads to Cellini actually planning and daringly carrying out his spectacular escape.

Cellini describes himself as a genius artist, almost like the hero in a mythical epic who (the parallel to Dante is evident) has to flee his home in Florence. Cellini does not always take the criterion of authenticity and truth in his reports very seriously. He creates a free space of self-constitution, as it were, in which fiction and truth cannot always be clearly separated. The genre of autobiography as such was not well-established in the early modern period. The tradition of Augustine's Confessiones and Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae was only continued in the eighteenth century, for example, with Rousseau's Confessions. Therefore, the many private matters that Cellini presents in his autobiographical first-person narrative are completely unusual for the Cinquecento. It is true that Petrarch was one of the first in Italy to establish a kind of cult of his own person in his writing and was considered a role model for classicists, however his approach is quite different from Cellini's. From Petrarch's numerous texts, it is sufficient to mention his famous letter to posterity, Epistola Posteritati, in which Petrarch prudently reinterprets Boccaccio's eulogistic Vita about his person in order to cautiously dismiss the prophecies, oracles and other portents of his excellency contained in it. Petrarch's model for this was Augustine and his explanations on appropriate speech in the Doctrina christiana (Book IV, 6 and 7). The fact that the effect of this superficial humility was an all the more forced self-elevation – and that we are therefore dealing with tactical behaviour here – is another matter.

Cellini, on the other hand, was an 'enfant terrible.' For his contemporaries, what Cellini subjected them to was a violation of classical decorum. The rhetorical rules of a Cicero or a Quintilian (Institutio oratoria) on the appropriateness of speech and especially of speaking about oneself were still binding in the Cinquecento, even if the manuals of rhetoric left a lot of leeway. This is not changed by pseudo first-person narratives such as those written by, say, Pietro Aretino or a Francesco Berni (Schulz-Buschhaus 1975). In contrast, 'authentically' personal matters were regarded as something that was none of the public's business, let alone fit to be published. So, if Cellini so ostentatiously transgresses the classical boundaries of shame, why does he do so? After all, Cellini's writing about things such as his regular or irregular sexual intercourse, about financial transactions and the like was of little avail to the function the tradition of the Vita as a genre was primarily intended to contribute to: namely, to highlight the exemplary nature of what is described. An assumption of exemplarity would surely pose a problem for Cellini's book in view of the fact that he even reports his acts of murder.

He himself is aware of his sinfulness in the Christian sense and repeatedly makes contrite apologies. However, he can always be sure of protection from the highest authorities. For he plans his murders prudently. For example, he deliberately murders in times of papal vacancy, as he can expect the subsequent new Vicar of Christ on earth (Pope Paul III as successor to Clement VII) to perform the usual first official acts: to bestow his amnesty on criminals and sinners. Cellini at one point even goes one step further in his self-defence. He boasts of complete immunity because an exceptional artistic talent like him cannot be measured by normal earthly standards. He quotes Pope Paul III: "Sappiate che gli uomini come Benvenuto, unici nella lor professione, non ànno da essere ubbrigati alla legge" (Cellini 1971a, 232).

The fact that artists like Cellini or Michelangelo were perceived as idiosyncratic at the time, is an indication that there was as yet no conception of the 'free artist' in the Renaissance, in the sense of the term coined in the nineteenth century. Not even the term of artista in the modern sense was in use. Cellini's 'individuality' is a specifically early modern one, that is: it has its place decidedly in spatial and social relationships, which the artist by no means abandons; he cannot cultivate a modern 'solitude of genius.' However, artists did slowly break away from the corporately organised workshops of the guilds and moved into courtly patronage, which opened up opportunities, but also restrictions due to patronage structures. Cellini had an unstable relationship with his patrons, be it the popes or François I of France and Cosimo I de' Medici.

In terms of functional history, Cellini's Vita in its Renaissance context can be interpreted as an attempt to remedy and to structure the perceived disparities and inconsistencies of his career as an artist. Cellini sees his belonging to social spaces and the respect and appreciation due to his person defamed and wants to counter this with a written testimony, in which he himself stylises his person as belonging to a group, but which actually turns out to be a clear breach of classicist norms from the point of view of his contemporaries. Cellini's calamities may have opened up paths of a premodern type of individualisation, which would later be reinterpreted as moments of individuality in a more modern sense. As such, they are impressive in retrospect and should not be questioned. However, with regard to anti-classicism, the very patterns of autobiographical writing in the Vita demonstrate very clearly that there can hardly be any question of subjective autonomy in the modern sense. Such an interpretation would simply be contradicted by the intertextual genre patterns and their rules, as well as social context. Cellini uses these patterns with freedom and self-confidence, but he is still bound by social conventions. This applies to the tradition of Vitae in general, such as Plutarch's depictions of Greek and Roman statesmen and Sueton's De vita Caesarum. In addition to the vitae tradition, Cellini draws on other classical models, the Libri di famiglia, the Ricordi and the Memorali. Their classical systems of rules dictate, for example, that the author's ancestry and origins be described first, then the country from which he originates, and then the region, the city and finally the author's parental home.

A topos of the aforementioned traditions is the precociousness of the author, his commitment and his talent, which was evident from a young age onwards. The beginning of Cellini's Vita fulfils all these requirements almost flawlessly. His hometown of Florence is compared to ancient Rome and linked to his family's genealogy. Julius Caesar, Benvenuto claims, had a brave captain named Fiorino da Cellino in his service, after whose first name Florence was named. After this legendary foundation, the family tree hypothesis of which is historically completely unproven, Benvenuto unfolds the patrimony of the Cellini family further, to his capable father and his grandfather Antonio, who was supposedly a hundred years old when Benvenuto reached infancy (Cellini 1971a, 66–67). As far as can be reconstructed, his grandfather Andrea was in reality at most 82 years old, but the grandson's fictional design is not really about the documentation of his family tree, but about the design of a legendary patronym, for which the role of the grandfather as biblical patriarch is necessary.

The following generations of Cellinis are virtuous people, but live in modest circumstances – and thus Benvenuto imperceptibly transfers the scheme of the Libri di famiglia into the Vita register. As far as family genealogy is concerned, Benvenuto bases his family chronicle on Christian edification and sermon literature, with numerous biblical borrowings. Benvenuto's parents are not blessed with children until late in life, and Benvenuto styles himself in the manner of John the Baptist, given to Elizabeth and the aged Zachariah (Isaac, who remains childless for a long time, is also alluded to).

What Cellini stages here is quite audacious. His origin and birth are portrayed as an analogy of the role of the praecursor, John the Baptist, and thus as a reference to things to come. The structure of the reference, however, has an anti-classicist twist. It explodes the classical genealogy (and the typological structure of figura and implementum) by revolving around the singular figure of Benvenuto as a precursor of his own later excellence. It announces his exceptional position as an artist who will surpass everything and everyone in the future. Remarkably, we are dealing with an autobiography that does not so much focus on the past or the present. Memory serves to pave the way for the exceptional Benvenuto beyond present time and space. This is all the more striking in that the latter, who omits practically no date in his vita that could be stylised, conspicuously marginalises the date of his final release after his second imprisonment in Castel Sant'Angelo. It is, in fact, 24 December, but Benvenuto then seems to shy away from contrasting the birth of Christ with a rival model. In the Christmas story, the events leading up to John's and Jesus' births are largely portrayed in parallel, although the incidents of the story of Christ surpass the passages relating to John the Baptist in each case. And while Cellini otherwise does not shy away from any rivalry, indeed is almost manically obsessed with outdoing everything and everyone in the sense of an exaggerated aesthetic of aemulatio, he remains restrained here and seems to want to demonstrate a submissive piety contrary to his anti-normative attitudes. At any rate, he does change his date of birth without exhibiting such scruples, moving it forward a day so that he appears to be born on the night after All Saints' Day. This is important to him because all the saints are commemorated on this feast – even those who have not been canonised – as well as the many saints whose holiness is known to no one but God. And to the latter category, at least as Benvenuto sees it, he himself also belongs.

With Benvenuto, a 're-naissance', a rebirth of the entire Cellini family clan is initiated, as it were. The individual, Benvenuto, is always part of the family whole and is loyal to his native Florence. The autobiographical I is thus the bearer of a family constellation that must be perpetuated and in whose service the individual stands. Cellini's supposedly individual poetics is thus, in fact, anchored in a supra-individual context, and his autobiography is a para-classicist textual combination that interweaves various forms of writing about the self. These are artificial forms of discourse, which in Cellini's case are forcefully oriented towards persuasion. Cellini wants to convince his readers. And to this end, he uses a register that derives from the classical legal narratio and offers the reception options corresponding to that genre. One can refuse this offer and continue researching what may have been true or false about the facts Cellini refers to. But this would probably miss his actual intention, which aims not at classical 'truths', but at the paraclassicist narratives of someone who is his own advocate: Cellini, who wants to portray Benvenuto's bravura according to the established criteria of probability and credibility. In this respect, he remains committed to communicative consensus. For as far as classical rhetoric is concerned, this is not primarily committed to truth, but to veri similis, to plausible speech. It is about narrative probability, about a semblance of proof that occurs primarily as a rhetorical effect.

As an author, Cellini is also concerned with his main aim as a visual artist, namely an artful presentation of the natural. If we return from there into the literary field, we could even say that Cellini's Vita is interesting primarily because it operates in the fictional mode. This does not mean that it is fictive: it is fictional, that is, fictionalised in relation to some reality of whatever kind, and therefore not a completely invented fantasy. Rather, it builds up a fictional tension with reality, the hybrid, para-classicist design of which is what is actually exciting. Cellini carves out a space for himself in relation to a present situation, which, at least in his perception, is deemed unjustifiably oppressive, and in which he is exposed to numerous calamities. Cellini relies on authentication effects not authorised by any classical tradition. At the same time, he is not the kind of author who would explicitly and intellectually reflect on the poiesis, the 'making' of his text. But he knows the power of the word and he is a naturally-gifted linguistic virtuoso. He trusts in 'fare con le mani', both in the realm of sculpture as well as in writing. In terms of the hypothesis of para-classicism, it is his intermedial twists and interlacings between word and artefact that render Cellini a true virtuoso, palpable in expressions like: "molte cose son belle da dire, che faccendole poi non s'accompagnano bene in opera" (Cellini 1971a, 373); "con le parole disegnato" (Cellini 1971a, 373).

What Cellini does not come up with, from a modern expectation of features typical to autobiographies, are attempts at introspection. Although Cellini certainly explores his conscience or even his motivations, he does not want to see these as limited in a mundane way; rather, his para-classicism aims at incomparably higher consecrations. His vita exhibits the aforementioned structures of hagiography and dwells on similarities with the life of Jesus. Cellini, who at the beginning of his text describes himself extensively in his role as a son, becomes over the course of his text a father's son in the Christian sense: the suffering Christ on the cross. The vision of Christ is transformed into the vision of a holy Benvenuto. When Cellini ascribes a kind of messianic election to himself, he is following in the footsteps of tradition, not least that of Dante, who, like Benvenuto, was chosen to behold divine glory even as a mortal. Cellini subsequently remains an illuminated man who, after his transcendent vision, claims to be accompanied by a halo above his head, but which is not visible at all times, in all spaces, and not equally visible to everyone.

Cellini repeatedly emphasises his supernatural talent, which is expressed particularly succinctly in childhood episodes narrated as legends and making use of allegorical dimensions. Benvenuto is about three when he discovers a scorpion. The scorpion is a symbol of water and also the astrological sign under which Cellini was born. The adults are frightened when they see the poisonous animal in the hands of the boy, who does not want to give up his catch. Somehow the father manages to cut off the scorpion's tail and pincers with scissors. The castration implication of the event is evident, all the more so because Benvenuto remains unharmed in comparison, which fact the artist later attributes primarily to his divinatory kinship with the (ultimately inferior) animal. Additionally, the childlike fearlessness of demigods is invoked (for example, the myth of Heracles, who as a child boldly strangled snakes with his own hands). Moreover, biblical references are echoed once again: the domestication of snakes and scorpions is found in the Gospel according to St. Luke 10:19.

The second episode from Cellini's childhood concerns the appearance of a salamander in the domestic fireplace. Now the salamander is a royal attribute of François I, with whom Cellini was repeatedly in service. Moreover, it is an animal that has alchemical and magical connotations, and it stands ambivalently between heat and cold. The fact that this episode is one of the first to be recounted in Cellini's Vita again closes the circle of the autobiographical remembering of the ageing artist, who, in retrospect, stylises his childhood under the sign of exceptionality. Like the salamander, Cellini later withstands fire both in terms of concrete craftsmanship and in a figurative sense, for he defies the hell created by his diabolic enemies, omnipresent in the Vita.

Cellini's character also has an affinity with fire. He describes himself as partly sanguine (i.e., according to the humoral pathology of the Renaissance, with an affinity for scorpions as a zodiac sign) and partly choleric. Hot-tempered as he is in some situations, in others Cellini is able to react with admirable cold-bloodedness, be it during the Sack of Rome and not least again and again in his work, in which the fragility of the materials requires the greatest calm, skill and circumspection. Cellini demonstrates this particularly vividly in the example of his most famous work, the monumental Perseus. As an artist, Cellini presents himself implicitly as the antithesis of the saturnine, melancholic, meditative Michelangelo. Cellini is red-haired, gruff, repeatedly unkempt, and in his depiction of himself he deliberately recalls the god of the underworld, who, like the artist, masters the art of forging with hot moulds in his role as the god of fire. And in this field, too, the smelting furnaces become ambivalent vehicles, since they could produce both cannons and works of art (Alessandro Lastricati, who was responsible for the casting of Perseus, was significantly a cannon founder by profession).

An exemplary episode for the para-classicist attitude of the Vita is to be found in Cellini's description of his encounter with Pietro Bembo, the classicist par excellence in the Cinquecento. Benvenuto describes above all "le più sterminate carezze", which the then already-prominent poet bestowed on him and that Bembo dubbed him a "virtuosissimo signore" (Cellini 1971a, 285). But when it comes to the fine arts, it turns out that the famous man does not know the first thing about them: "e come quello era grandissimo innelle sue lettere e innella poesia in superlativo grado, ma di questa mia professione Sua Signoria non entendeva nulla al mondo" (Cellini 1971a, 285).

#### 4.2.2 Cellini's Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura

Cellini's work as a visual artist had a striking influence on his writing. Poetry, craft and artefact are in constant synaesthetic exchange in Cellini's work and mutually shape each other. At a time when the artes mechanicae still have to assert themselves intellectually against the artes liberales, Cellini strives to expand the classical professional canon of artists to include the goldsmith's art. The latter is mounted in Cellini's poetic and aesthetic texts as a competitive paradigm set against the fine arts, a feat accomplished by exploring disparities within the theory framework of a flexible tradition of discussing the arts. The segments and structures of Cellini's contrarian classicism are alternative drafts to the acts of self-proclamation and self-canonisation of his time and above all to Vasari's system of classical models. Cellini's treatise is also to be seen as a rival offering to Vasari's second edition of his Vite, which also appeared in 1568 and of whose contents Cellini may already have learned beforehand. Vasari – unlike in the first edition (1560) – devalued the goldsmith's art in the revision of 1568. The oreficeria was eliminated from the realm of the disegno (Collareta 2003, 163). On the one hand, this infuriated Cellini, but on the other hand, in this way the composition of the most important practical art treatise of the Cinquecento was triggered, and with it the possibility of revaluing the goldsmith's art in a para-classicist manner. Cellini wrote the first part of the Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura in 1565, as a wedding gift to Francesco de' Medici and Joan of Austria. The part on sculpture was written in 1567 and the complete text was printed in 1568. Like the Vita, the manuscript was subject to many changes as to its whereabouts, and was finally secured by the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (cod. 5134). It was republished by Milanesi in 1857 (Cellini/Milanesi 1857). Cellini's treatise, however, is not only a sui generis work that provides insight into the tangible practices of the artist's workshop. The text is also, as far as its autobiographical digressions are concerned, similar to the Vita. Trento has demonstrated the mutual proximity of the two works in terms of content on the basis of source material (Trento 1984, 43–88).

With few exceptions, Cellini worked with gold, silver and bronze. Questions about sculpture are therefore not separable in Cellini's case from the art of the goldsmith. First of all, artistic and commodity value are very interchangeable in the craft in which Cellini was active. Metal artists always had to be aware that their works of art could be melted down to be made into coins or cannons at any moment. This fact alone stands in the way of a tangible, long-term classicism from the outset. Incidentally, Cellini himself often melted down works of art without scruple, as he recounts in the Vita, on behalf of the Pope during the Sacco di Roma. And Cellini knew what Petrarch had always urged: without (materiallytransmitted) texts or works of art, there is no afterlife of the artist and thus of his glory. The permanent danger of works being melted down and other forms of loss were thus a constant affliction, against the horizon of which Cellini generally wrote his texts; it is in these that he saw an alternative option for longevity.

For all the appreciation of it, art was by no means seen as 'auratic' in the same way in the Renaissance as it was in later centuries. Beyond its ceremonial uses, art had a strictly more material status than later on. This materiality, however, led precisely to a greater appreciation of the artist proving his value in the difficult process of producing such material objects than in the myth of the effortlessly accomplished work of art since Romanticism. Sculptors such as Michelangelo or Cellini worked in a field in which the artes mechanicae and the artes liberales were still partly merged and in which the artist was assigned the role of mastering matter. It was from pragmatic uses of material objects that perfectly decorated luxury objects emerged, removed from everyday use, as was particularly evident in Cellini's famous salt sellar (Saliera) for François I. According to Cellini's special version of the paragone, the sculptor's texts echo this relationship between usability and pure form in that they, too, distance themselves from everyday speech, which can be measured by criteria of truth: they become an artistic type of discourse, which merely 'quotes' its own practical use. They are artefacts whose production is part of their message. What Pico della Mirandola called "plastes et factor" (Mirandola 1990, 6) in De hominis dignitate manifests itself in them: every human being creates sculptures and poetry that mirror their own inner selves.

Cellini contributed to the paragone between the arts of his time, with provocative but unsystematic comments. In fact, the discourse may ultimately have been too theoretical for him. Cellini sought the direct agon of practice, a competition between workshops. However, in the Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura he strictly distinguishes between "un valente praticone" and the "praticonacci": only the former "son degni di lode" (Cellini 1971b, 597). It was important to Cellini to pass on his practical knowledge in treatises, which was a wise decision insofar as he could hardly have contributed anything unique within the framework of the academic paragone discussion – unlike, on the other hand, in the Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura, in which he does make an important contribution. His workshop book 'is absolutely unique, because between the writing of Theophilus' De diversis artibus, written at the beginning of the twelfth century, and the literature on the art of goldsmithing that only first began to emerge in the eighteenth century, there are only these Trattati, completed around 1566' (Brepohl 2005, 7: "ist ein absolutes Unikat, denn zwischen der Anfang des 12. Jahrhunderts entstandenen Schrift des Theophilus De diversis artibus und der im 18. Jahrhundert beginnenden Goldschmiedeliteratur gibt es nur diese um 1566 fertiggestellten Trattati").1

The notes are particularly productive for Philological Material Studies in general (Oster in course of print b), but also provide information on Cellini's para-classicist corpus of works, not least in the form of a theoretical authentication of remarks in the Vita. On the basis of modern metallurgy (Brepohl 2005, 7), it can be shown that the facts reported with regard to the production processes 'correspond exactly to the works of art handed down to us' (Brepohl 2005, 9: "[stimmt] exakt mit den überlieferten Kunstwerken überein"). One of the questions about the Vita, which has occupied purely text-immanent literary studies, can be answered unequivocally by thus expanding the text corpus to the treatise: 'If the information about the verifiable objects is so reliable, we can also rely just as surely on the very vivid descriptions of the jewellery and works of art that have since been lost' (Brepohl 2005, 9: "Wenn die Angaben über die nachprüfbaren Objekte so zuverlässig sind, können wir uns auch auf die sehr anschaulichen Beschreibungen der inzwischen verlorengegangenen Schmuckstücke und Kunstwerke genauso sicher verlassen."). This conclusion is confirmed by Acidini Luchinat (Acidini Luchinat 2003).

In the Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura, Cellini presents himself as the contemporary master of the eight main techniques of the goldsmith: working with gold, silver, engraving, gem-setting, enamelling, chasing, gilding and metal casting. Contrary to what Brepohl summarily presents from a point of view of cultural studies, Cellini the writer of treatises cannot be 'assigned to 'Mannerism'' (Brepohl 2005, 9: "dem 'Manierismus' zuzuordnen"). The Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura can be read as a decidedly para-classicist act of textual certification that Cellini was already a purveyor of the fine arts during his lifetime, a function which would not have been conceptually compatible with an emancipation from pragmatic and social contexts usually associated with Mannerism. The dedication "Allo illustrissimo ed eccellentissimo signor principe governante di Firenze e di Siena" is a telling demonstration of Cellini's para-classicist attempt to confirm his status.

All translations are mine (given in single quotation marks).

This dedicatory epistle begins with protestations of indisposition (Benvenuto excuses himself for not being able to attend the wedding in person: "indisposizione"; "non potere operare"; "mal contento;" Cellini 1971b, 591), for which "fortuna", omnipresent in the Cinquecento, is to blame (Cellini 1971b, 591). But it is the artist who is able to give this chain of unfortunate circumstances a creative turn. The signal word for this is "capriccio" additionally underlined by "nuovo." The innovation of the capriccio is to be classified as decidedly para-classicist (and not as mannerist), for subsequently another signal word is invoked that links Cellini's project to classical poetics: "piacevolissima" (Cellini 1971b, 591). The superlative, however, is prudently hedged. Cellini does not attribute it directly to himself, but reclaims for himself the 'classical' status of an exception by making everything depend on the recipient. And indeed, the "principi" for whom Cellini has worked so far are "grandissimi" (Cellini 1971b, 592). For their sake, the "piacevolissima" is complemented by the term "utile", echoing Horace's delectare et prodesse. Cellini is the one artist who playfully manages the para-classicist balancing act between classicism and innovation, between entertainment and instruction, because he masters "molte arte diverse" in a practical paragone: "cambio di operare [. . .], presi la penna, e di mano in mano [. . .] scrivevo tutte le mie estreme fatiche" (Cellini 1971b, 592–593). The superlative extreme pervades this dedication from the first to the last line ("grandissimi", "illustrissima", "felicissima"), which can be read symbolically with reference to Cellini's paraclassicism: the classical references are (not only grammatically) unassailable. But the superlative is overstretched to such an extent that the words use their contours in a general 'elative', in excess and independently of their semantics, only to be tamed by the virtuosity of Cellini's "mia mano" (Cellini 1971b, 592). Cellini then goes on to list the "bellissimi segreti e mirabili modi" of his art. He never ignores the classical tradition, but it is in such bad shape in the present ("cotal male [. . .] tal male") that it takes a Benvenuto to compensate for the malvenuto: "mi fussi addivenuto, io" (Cellini 1971b, 592).

#### 4.2.3 Cellini's Rime

Cellini's lyrical production2 began in the mid-twenties of the Cinquecento and continued until the end of his life. With the endecasillabo "Questa mia vita travagliata io scrivo", Cellini begins a sonnet in his Vita whose autobiographical

The reflections on the Rime grew out of joint work with Laura Umlauf in the research project "Anti-classicisms in the Cinquecento" at the LMU Munich.

tendency is not a singular occurrence, but nevertheless exceptional in the Cinquecento. Among other things, Cellini describes his sensational life, which was marked by a talent for creating jewellery and sculptures. A closer look at the events, most of which are highly embellished narratively, reveals a highly artificial construct under the signum of self-fashioning, interspersed with quotations; a construct which – like Cellini's other texts and works of art characterised by aemulatio and superatio – can be located in the broader context of anticlassicism. The fact that lyric poetry was also of great importance to Benvenuto is evident not only in the prominent placement of the quoted sonnet within a narrative text, but also in the multitude and the motifs of the Rime, which, however, remained unpublished during Cellini's lifetime. Initially, from 1811 onwards, only individual poems were published in anthologies or as paratexts to other works such as the Vita or the Trattati (Cellini 1857, e.g. XLII or XLIXf).

The unwieldiness, apparent remoteness from rules and inaccessibility of the Rime can be read through the lens of a presupposed para-classicism as contrapuntal commentaries on the programmatic classicism of the Cinquecento – and not as elaborations of a supposed mannerism avant la lettre (as sustained by Carrara 1926 and Mirollo 1984, 72–98). Even in purely chronological terms, Cellini seems incompatible with the schools of exaggerated and exaggeratedly formulaic procedures commonly associated with Mannerism. But something else is even more important: Cellini's form of crisis management, unlike Mannerism, remains connected to the codified reference system of the classical (imitatio veterum), even if he repeatedly transcends an imitatio auctorum, especially with regard to the rules of decorum. However, Bembo's classicism, oriented towards the ideal of elegantia and a unified middle style based on the tempering of gravità and piacevolezza, is only of limited use for Cellini's penchant for violenza and terribilità (see chap. 4.3.1.1 and 4.3.1.2). Cellini's excess of artistry leads to an erosion of dogmatic classicist norms, whereupon transgressions take place selectively, but without a complete break. Rather, the gestures of transgression tie in with contemporary contexts of an emergence of new 'types of images and extravagant visual languages' (Thimann 2008, 27: "Bildertypen und extravaganter Bildsprachen"). In the autobiography, as seen, this provides insights into the rise and self-image of an artist of the Cinquecento. As a poet, Cellini also positions himself as an 'uomo universale' and 'uomo virtuoso', for whom Leonardo da Vinci (also active at the court of François I, as Cellini was for a time) was exemplary in the view of his contemporaries (Tauber 2009, 166). Like da Vinci, Cellini boasts of being a goldsmith, sculptor, musician, writer and poet, and of writing treatises (such as the aforementioned Trattati dell'Oreficeria e della Scultura). In this context, the contemporary theoretical revaluation of the arts, including poetry, should be pointed out once again. The Accademia del Disegno, founded by Giorgio Vasari in 1563, deserves special mention here.

The first largely complete, albeit flawed, publication of the poetry can be traced back to the 1857 edition by Carlo Milanesi. As in the case of the Vita, it is not clear why the Rime were not printed during Cellini's lifetime. Annibale Caro points out Cellini's problematic tone towards his patrons (Gamberini 2014, 49), for example in the letters to Luca Martini of 22 November 1539 and to Benedetto Varchi of 5 December 1539. Gamberini points out that the Rime were certainly intended for publication, since dedications to specific individuals can be found in the titles of the poems or epistolary references (Gamberini 2014, LXVIII–LXIV). From the purely literary perspective dominant from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, Cellini's Rime, described as "subletteratura" (Gamberini 2014, IX), were classified as amateurish because of their apparent coarseness, unwieldiness and formal deviation. Similarly to Mannerism and in line with a 'traditional, dichotomously structured literary-historical ordering convention' (Pany 2012/13, 23: "tradierten, dichotomisch strukturierten literaturhistorischen Ordnungskonvention") prevalent throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cellini is classified as a – negatively evaluated – anti-classicist (cf. Gamberini 2014, IX–XXXIV). In this context, for example, his poetry is spoken of as "non del tutto disprezzabile, per la novità dei grandiosi e bizzarri concetti" (Francesco Tassi, 1829, cited in Gamberini 2014, XI) or of his "concetti capricciosi, nebulosi" (Carlo Milanesi, 1857, cited in Gamberini 2014, XVI), which are not geared towards readability and are due to Cellini's lack of a humanist education. In this respect, parallels are drawn to Michelangelo's poetry, referring to an "assenza di 'disciplina', [. . .] improprietà, zeppe, oscurità, contorsioni, durezze, che non si possono accettare, perché realmente sgradevoli" (Benedetto Croce cited in Gamberini 2014, XIX) – with an analogous emphasis on an always glaring distance from the classical canon.

It was only in the course of the twentieth century that a more adequate discussion of Cellini the poet emerged, a less judgmental and more descriptive criticism, which acknowledged his achievement. Cellini's poetry is now seen as a "poesia [. . .] appassionata, [che] canta le cose che possiedono l'anima sua" (Enrico Carrara, 1926, cited in Gamberini 2014, XX), or as poetry of "grande intensità e [. . .] multiforme testimonianze di una personalità d'eccezione" (Giuseppe Guido Ferrero, 1971, cited in Gamberini 2014, XXIII). Cellini's complex and contradictory personality is thereby appreciated from a psychological point of view, a personality which manifests itself by means of "[rime] frammentari[e] [di] discorde effusività" (Giuseppe Guido Ferrero, 1971, cited in Gamberini 2014, XXIV). Due to the complexity and heterogeneity of the texts, editions of the Rime are confronted with problems that also concern the form, since no further information has been handed down by Cellini himself (for example, on macrotextual arrangement). Gamberini argues against a chronological structure, which anyway could at best only partly be reconstructed based on correspondence. Cellini generally took up events anachronistically in his poems (Gamberini 2014, XLIV–XLVI). There are weighty arguments against a "forma-canzoniere [. . .] di marca petrarchesca" (Gamberini 2014, LVIII), despite the constant references to his biography and his other works, both literary and artistic.

A look at the thematic complexes reveals a wide range. There are religiousspiritual, philosophical, burlesque-comic and encomiastic poems, but also poems of repentance, poems about Cellini's stays in prison, about the paragone discussion, about his art or matters of art theory. There are sonnets, octaves, canzonas, madrigals and fragments. In the current edition of the Rime by Gamberini, they are divided into the following sections: "Poesie ordinate e trascritte dall'autore", "Poesie non ordinate dall'autore", "Rime dubbie" and "Rime apocrife". Many of Cellini's poems are situated in the context of the paragone discussion or an aemulatio that has been described as an epochal signature of an artist who 'made surpassing his life as well as his art programme' (Tauber 2009, 170). Self-heroisation and gestures of surpassing are manifested at both formal and textual levels, as in the sonnet 'senza titolo', in which Cellini seeks to demonstrate the superiority of sculpture. The first quartet states:

Lustrante, etterna et glorïosa et bella: felicie se' più d'ogni altra inmortale, non ci è arte o scïenza a te rivale, se' come 'l sol è 'n ciel più d'ogni stella. (vv. 1–4) (Cellini 2014, 53)

In praising an art that appears personified, with hyperbolic comparisons and descriptive attributes, sculpture in an "orgogliosa affermazione del primato della scultura" (Cellini/Gamberini 2014, 52), is declared superior to medicine, philosophy and the art of war. In the context of the paragone discussion and influenced by Benedetto Varchi's Lezzioni (cf. Varchi 2013), Cellini takes on unfamiliar intellectual challenges. He draws on Petrarch and Vittoria Colonna and on Vasari's vocabulary to cover his writing through various auctoritates. Mingling the proper with the foreign, the sonnet also aims at an effect of admiratio, which, however, is not to be confused with the Mannerist or Baroque marvelous (Oster 2019). Cellini's sculptural qualities, which he developed alongside his work as a goldsmith, are emphasised in the first tercet, as he refers to Socrates, who is his equal and no less active as a 'scultore': "Socrate ti lasciò quand'io ti presi, / cagion che me' d'ogni altro al mondo disse: / da·tterra asciese alla maggior altura, […]" (vv. 8–11) (Cellini 2014, 53). Cellini thus deploys a kind of syllogism to refer once again to sculpture as the highest art form, as "chiunque sia riuscito in essa non avrà difficoltà a primeggiare in un diverso ambito" (Cellini/Gamberini 2014, 55). The poem ends by again praising sculpture in the second tercet: "lieve sentì l'parlar, non quei gran pesi / dove la mente, l'alma, il corpo fisse; / più-vval nostra inmortal, sacra scultura." (vv. 12–14).

Cellini's argumentative poem on the superiority of sculpture can be interpreted epigrammatically, as it is characterised by appropriate brevity and elegant wordplay. The classical genre of the epigram, however, is transformed by Cellini into para-classicist punchlines. This finding is also supported by the text accompanying the poem and contributing to a better understanding. Possibly in imitation of a scholar's commentary, or perhaps as a prosimetric form less typical at the time, which disregards genre divisions, this comment could have served, in Cellini's understanding, to lend his poetry additional nobility (Tasso's commentaries on his own poems will subsequently provide a similar example). The sonnet Di carcere al Duca (Cellini 2014, 13), which, as the title already reveals, is written at the time of Cellini's imprisonment in 1557, presents itself quite differently. The lyrical I in the first quartet addresses Cosimo I de' Medici, from whom he hopes for mercy and an end to his imprisonment:

Glorïoso Signiore, poi che a Dio piaqque ducarvi, pien d'oro e d'ingegnio, discreto e santo e d'ogni laulde degnio, dê muova in voi pietà quest'esser mio:

(vv. 1–4)

In this encomiastic speech, a polysyndetic turn in verse three emphasises the noble qualities of the Duca. Among other things, Latinisms are evident, exemplified in "laulde" (v. 3), which are possibly intended to raise the style level. Quantitatively, the description of Cellini's own sorrowful condition predominates in the following lines. This passage lacks neither hyperbole nor the display of virtuoso rhetorical devices, which is due to the poet's imaginative inventio:

ò cinquantasei anni hora e se io muoïo in questo carcer, che vil pegnio vi resti poi un sol cadavro indegnio! Perso arte, speme, fede e 'l sudor mio:

(vv. 5–8)

The lyrical I points to his advanced age, in view of which the Duke should show mercy, since all that will soon remain of 'Cellini' is a corpse. All his art, his faith, his hope will be lost, and "'l sudor mio" (v. 8) quotes the Orlando furioso (VII, 56, 8: "lungamente atteso ho del sudor mio?"; Ariosto 1960, 183) and stands metonymically for Cellini's great effort as a sculptor. The poem can also be read paradigmatically for Cellini's discriminatory treatment. Neither had the artist been adequately rewarded for his Perseus, nor had he received the desired gloria through its creation. In the concluding terzina, which begins with a chiastic-antithetical verse "Addaccio in mezzo al fuoco e nel diaccio ardo:" (v. 12) which line refers to Petrarch's Canzoniere, references to Ariosto ("grevi affanni", v. 14) or the Liber psalmorum ("'n galdio [. . .] affanni", v. 14) are again included (Cellini 2014, 13).

The sonnet A M. Benedetto Varchi is less marked by efforts at distinction and individualisation than the poems just discussed. However, it is also written within the sphere of influence of Varchi's Lezzione (which also includes Laura Battiferri; cf. Cellini/Gamberini 2014, 179). In the first quartet, a Petrarchist element can be observed, which is followed by a quotation of the Bembist distinction between the flowers of rhetoric and the fruit of philosophy (according to Cellini/Gamberini 2014, 179–180):

La ricca pianta, bench'alquanto acerba, che da Voi surgie a questo nuovo aprile, laür che s'alza al ciel frescho e sottile, frutti, hombre e fior già stende amplie all'erba. (vv. 1–4)

In the course of the second quartet, too, in which the immortal, holy laurel is recommended, Cellini uses Petrarchist stylistic figures. But Michelangelo, Bronzino and Varchi himself also seem to be reference models in terms of word choice or concepts. Gamberini (2014, 180–181) refers to the "accumulazione di cinque aggettivi [che] è petrarchesco" (v. 6) or the motif of noble materials (v. 11), then to some adjectives typical of Michelangelo (v. 7), to an alliteration (v. 10) that can be traced back to Varchi and the Dantesque verb infiora (v. 10). In the last tercet, Cellini recalls the estate of Laura Battiferri and her husband, here in the context of an "immaginario pastorale del Ninfale fiesolano" reminding us of Boccaccio's eponymous work (Cellini/Gamberini 2014, 182). The last verse seems to allude to the renowned edition of the Primo libro delle Opere Toscane by Laura Battiferri, published in 1560 in order to gain rehabilitation in the Medici circle, a goal also pursued by Cellini himself: "Se oggi a Maian, fra tante ninfe e maghe, / lei col canto i pastor vincie e gli eroi, / questo 'l mondo di speme e d'opre honora." (vv. 12–14).

Cellini demonstrates with this and similarly crafted poems that he is familiar with classical norms. The conspicuous intellectualisation of poetry, however, is not necessarily to its advantage, which is true for the Petrarchism of the time in general and not for Cellini alone. On the other hand, Cellini's Vita presents life in a seemingly casual and uninhibited style, but the level of literary idealisation it introduces ultimately proves to be excessive, artificially elaborate and transgressive. In this autobiographical narrative, Cellini is free to realise a transgressive para-classicism, less burdened by the limits of genre and tradition than in poetry. The Petrarchist or epigrammatic, argutia-ridden lyric forms, on the other hand, use a certain mechanism, which in itself can be interpreted as a second-degree para-classicist technique on a metapoetical level.

In addition to sonnets written in prison, religious poetry and poems based on various themes from the life of Cellini's persona of 'artista-scrittore', there is a not inconsiderable number of poems dedicated to the dispute over precedence between the two arts of painting and sculpture. The corpus of these paragone poems comprises about 14 sonnets and caudate sonnets, although this theme is also manifest to a lesser extent in other poems of the Rime. In addition to his art, his autobiography and his treatises, Cellini's poetry thus also deals with the question of points in common, differences, possibilities and limits of visual media and language, which had ignited a discussion around the middle of the sixteenth century in which not only contemporary artists, but also literary figures and philosophers participated. Always against the backdrop of ut pictura poesis and in need of demarcation and evaluation of one's own discipline, which, especially in the case of artists, went hand in hand with efforts to enhance their social status and also very practical financial interests, the discussion took on increasingly sharp contours in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After Petrarch had, in De remediis, claimed that sculpture was superior to painting because of its greater closeness to nature through its three-dimensionality and thus apparent liveliness, Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci and Baldassare Castiglione's Cortegiano are fundamental in relation to Cellini's poetry in this respect. It is true that the artists and, at the same time, art theorists Alberti and Da Vinci had attempted to elevate painting (which they both regarded as the higher art) to the status of a science by providing it with a comprehensive catalogue of rules. Thus, with regard to the dispute about superiority in the Quattrocento, one can speak of a transitory, identity-forming phase, which then culminated in the Cinquecento, gaining in magnitude, in downright feuds under the sign of Classicism.

If we now concentrate on the superiority topos in Cellini's poetry, the chronological order of his Rime manifests an accumulation of paragone poems in the months leading up to the funeral celebrations (July 1564) that had to be organised on the occasion of Michelangelo's death in February 1564. In a first phase, Cellini had dealt with the theme on a practical basis in the forties of the Cinquecento, for example in the Narcissus or the Saliera. A second phase can be identified as a kind of reflex to the verbal and written attacks on Cellini's positions in the paragone by Vincenzo Borghini. As 'luogotenente' of the Accademia del Disegno, Borghini participated in decisions on individual components of a catafalque that was to enhance the status of Michelangelo's work with the aid of an allegorical programme. Here, painting was given priority (an allegory of pittura was to adorn the heraldically more highly valued front of the catafalque). Cellini, who was also a member of the organising committee, saw this as a devaluation of sculpture in Michelangelo's work. After unsuccessful efforts to implement an alternative programme that would give sculpture its proper importance, Cellini left the project in the aftermath of a dispute (cf. on this and the following Gamberini 2014, XLIV–LVII). Moreover, in his Selva di notizie (ms. K 783 [16], Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence), Borghini ridiculed Cellini's demands in the latter's epistle to Benedetto Varchi, amongst other things by showing amusement with Cellini's postulate that the sculptor had to be, among other things, a good warrior, musician or poet if he wanted to create a sculpture of the aforementioned figures. Borghini draws on the example of the ancient sculptor Praxiteles, who according to this line of argument would have had to be a good horse himself to create a statue of one. The polemical criticism, apart from invalidating Cellini's paragone arguments, also aimed at the latter's para-classicist demand for an artist who would correspond to the image of a 'uomo universale' in post-classical times.

Within the contexts described above, Cellini's poems on these subjects can be localised with regard to the paragone theme. To defend sculpture, for example, the topos of 'God as artist' manifests itself mostly polemically and pointedly when Cellini writes in the poem Quel inmortale Iddio della natura (Cellini 2014, 240):

Quel inmortale Iddio della natura, che fecie i cieli e 'l mondo e noi fé degni delle sue mani, senza far disegni, come Quel che ogni arte aveva sicura, di terra fecie la prima scultura, et la mostrò agli angel de' suoi regni, (vv. 1–5)

Here, the core of all legendary accounts of the artist as 'alter deus' or representative of the Creator (as for example Daedalus and Prometheus) is called up, a motif already manifested in antiquity, which in this case refers above all to the poet. In the Cinquecento, this configuration is part of a fixed set of classical topoi, for example in Vasari's work, too, who in such contexts and alongside Aretino often refers to the 'divino artista' Michelangelo. Cellini also refers here to the prototype of man, Adam, created by God without any preliminary drawing and from earth, an indication of the superiority of sculpture. In addition to Cellini, Varchi had interviewed seven other artists in his survey (see Nova 2003 for an overview). As well as comparing man to the divine creative process, as its most worthy and oldest model, ingenuity, imagination and inspiration are also attributed to divine inspiration. Mimesis is relativised and the 'furor dell'arte' (cf. Oster in course of print a) is given precedence, enabling the artist to feel and invent the new and unheard-of. Cellini underpins the moment of elevatio in the further course of the sonnet. From Satan's original sin of rebelling against a higher entity, Cellini deduces the topos of painting as the devil's work, which was widespread in the Cinquecento. He uses this as an opportunity to attribute an inadmissible rebelliousness against the primacy of sculpture to the painters. Painting is nothing more than an inganno and nothing more than a shadow of the rilievo.

The topos of inganno manifests itself in other paragone poems by Cellini as well, such as the sonnet Gli à dato la sentenzia giusta et pura (Cellini 2014, 328). The poem is to be seen in the context of the virulent question of which ars represents reality most truly and faithfully and can function as a sign system that is as universal and universally understandable as possible. In the course of this sonnet, the lyrical I also directly addresses "frate" Vincenzo Borghini and "Giorgio" Vasari (v. 5), whose offence, on the one hand, would lie in their turn to painting and a concomitant ignorance of the sculptor's activity. On the other hand, Cellini, referring to the 'gran maestro' Michelangelo, who only completed one work a year, wants to justify his own modest speed in the realisation of works of art, which others perceive as ineffective and too slow. In connection with the longer duration of work, which to a certain extent lies in the nature of the realisation of a sculpture, reference should be made to another motive that could justify its superiority: since in the Cinquecento statues were increasingly often placed as freestanding objects in an effort to return to how they were displayed in antiquity – in contrast to medieval times during which they were mostly integrated into the architecture of a building or a tomb – it was now the artist's task to make them aesthetically pleasing from all sides. This in turn entailed a greater amount of work and a higher standard. In the caudate sonnet O voi, ch'havete non sapendo sparte parole al vento (Cellini 2014, 251), this is stated explicitly: "Ha solo una veduta la pittura, / l'altra è suggetta a più di cento parte" (vv. 7–8). Furthermore, the permanence of the work of art is brought up: "quell'opre che si fanno agevolmente / son poco degne perché presto han fine, / l'altre han gran lode più meritamente" (vv. 9–11). For Cellini, the advantage lies – in the sense of Horace's question as to which of the arts guaranteed greater and longer-lasting fame for patron and artist due to their longevity – with the sculptor, foundryman or goldsmith. Unlike paintings, which are (too) easy to execute, their works have the advantage of a more durable type of art and material.

This is also confirmed in the sonnet Il Boschereccio (Cellini 2014, 258): "ma quel più gran sculpir eterno e 'ntero / (in oro, argento, bronzo, marmi) è degno / di tener sopra ogni arte il primo impero" (vv. 12–14). The function of the semantic field of boschereccio for the reception of the pastoral background of this poem must be mentioned at this point. When the speaker's voice in the Rime repeatedly presents itself as that of a shaggy and not very socially compatible 'forest man' (similar to how Cellini describes himself as a brittle, resistant artist in comparison to Michelangelo in the Vita), the para-classicist implications are evident. Even in Allo Ill.mo S. Duca di Firenze fecie Benvenuto dichiearando la Filosofia Boschereccia (Cellini 2014, 6), the classical status of the bucolic genre remains unquestioned. Against this, however, there is the problem of a decided shortage of relevant theoretical opinions on it, which endangers this status (Krauss 2015, 235). This ambivalence opens up a field of possible experimentation for the Rime, in which Dante's situation of being lost in both a geographical and a moral sense in the selva oscura at the beginning of the Divina Commedia represents another intertextual connection. This para-classicist ambivalence is additionally strengthened by the fact that even after Sanazaro's Arcadia, the genre affiliation of the bucolic was by no means certain, but mixed forms were permissible (Krauss 2015, 241).

In Cellini's hybrid form of lyrical poetry, the aim of fomenting and even forcing renewed poetological discussion and the poetic struggle for recognition of his arguments on the theory of art are both supported by a constant practice of taking up old, classical forms and combining them with heterogeneous and even anti-classicist elements, in order to help something new and para-classicist to emerge. In the Rime, autobiography, conversion literature and art theory, among others, are mixed together in a pluralising design. Cellini's poems are not categorically anti-classicist, but they emphasise the individual, which shows itself in para-classicist contrapositions and turnabouts. Cellini's Rime are complementary to classicism and rarely openly oppose it. He often tries to outdo classical models, but then overshoots these classicist gestures by textual elements that, at least in retrospect, seem to belong to a kind of modernity avant la lettre. Cellini's incoherences in all his public and non-public utterances were bound to meet with little positive contemporary response, given his dubious reputation. However, it was precisely the fact that he was rejected in certain more prestigious social and cultural contexts that, along with his exorbitant selfconfidence, triggered his remarkable experiments. This led to some very individual solutions, to which in hindsight we can assign the quality of para-classicism and which most of his contemporaries failed to recognise, bound as they were to a form of dogmatic classicism.

## 4.3 Systematic and overarching aspects of Cellini's para-classicism

#### 4.3.1 Examples of para-classicist manipulation in Cellini's work

#### 4.3.1.1 Power and violence in Cellini's texts

Virtus and fama are closely related in the Renaissance and are in turn connected to the analogy between the creator god (deus artifex) and the artist and his virtus creativa. It makes sense to analyse Cellini's anti-classicism on the basis of categories that were negatively attributed to him by contemporaries: violenza, terribilità as well as fierezza, and, in a certain way, also gloria. That these categories have anti-classicist potential is evident and would be banal as the only finding. In the following paragraphs, the focus will rather be on determining the extent to which Cellini uses a kind of verbal violence that goes beyond both the pathologic actions of a 'criminal mind' (Bredekamp 2008) and a philosophical 'figure of thought' (Plackinger 2016). Finally, the fact of murder itself is not the real scandal contained within Cellini's Vita. Murder was not only common in the Cinquecento, but was also committed by prominent figures, including Cosimo I de' Medici (Bredekamp 2003, 345–346). What is more sensational is that Cellini, in a para-classicist mixture of penitent confessional literature and glorious selfstylisation, does not cover up his murders, but boasts about them by means of the written word and thus documents them for posterity. Again, the basic structure is a contradictory complementarity of abiding by the rules and transgressing them, but this transgression does not necessarily pose a threat to classical values. As an extreme form of artistic sovereignty, violence can also be interpreted as perfect aemulatio. Cellini measures himself against classical antiquity with enthusiasm and virtuosity:

Standomi in Pisa andai a vedere il Campo Santo, e quivi trovai molte belle anticaglie; [. . .] viddi molte altre cose antiche, intorno alle quali tutti e' giorni che mi avanzavano del mio lavoro della bottega assiduamente mi affaticavo; [. . .] spendevo tutte l'ore mie virtuosamente [. . .]. (Cellini 1971a, 80)

Cellini's actual para-classicism, however, is not directed at the past but at the present, and he reacts angrily and with a full sense of his (supposed or actual) superiority when colleagues shy away from the contest by seeking cover behind antiquity: "[. . .] perché tutto quello che gli aveva veduto di noi moderni era molto discosto dal ben fare di quelli antichi. [. . .] cercando di scilire l'opere mie facendosi formatore di antichi." (Cellini 1971a, 445). Challenged by Giorgio Vasari and intellectually inspired by Benedetto Varchi, Cellini looks towards Michelangelo's works and theoretical concepts and ideas, which reflect a pronounced preoccupation with the figure of thought of violenza. In Michelangelo's work, too, violenza is manifest both as an object of representation and as an artistic subtext (Plackinger 2018), whereas Cellini, in contrast, even extends his violence to the real world.

The personally-held power of Renaissance princes and the legal practice connected with it result in a broad spectrum of punishments, even very lenient ones, imposed on Cellini's violent acts by the prince or pope. The reason for this is not just arbitrariness, but can be connected with the universality of the struggle for power, whether in the political or the cultural sphere, and consequently a certain omnipresence of acts of violence. Violenza and terribilità could therefore in some contexts be socially acceptable. The Latin potestas in the sense of a 'rightful power' serves to distinguish acceptable violence from its primitive, brutish counterpart (Müller-Salo 2018, 39). And on closer examination, violentia can even be traced back etymologically to the not necessarily negative vis – 'force' or 'strength.' Vis, in turn, can be related to vir ('man') or to virtus ('virtue', 'efficiency'), terms that can already be traced back to works by Seneca and Cicero; a decidedly positive connotation emerges with Machiavelli in the sense of an ideal of masculinity, a 'virtuoso' (Plackinger 2016, 53–54). A look at the concrete application of the term is helpful here: in addition to the use of the term violenza by influential literary figures (above all the tre corone), whose works were widely received in the Cinquecento (Plackinger 2016, 54), reference should be made above all to Cesare Ripa's Iconologia (1593), but also to the dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca (1612). Under violenza we find there, on the one hand, a certain semantic entanglement of 'force' and 'power', on the other hand, an opposition between those two and natura (on this and the following aspects Plackinger 2016, 53–64). Nature in its turn is opposed to art and can thus be seen as something to be overcome, and for this purpose classical measure may be exceeded. Thus, the concept of violenza can be positive in the sense of 'superior force', or negative, as 'transgression'. Furthermore, the artist's fierezza can also be seen as a counterpart to Castiglione's sprezzatura, as a less casual but more aggressive form of pride. Power imbalances, however, exist equally in both areas.

The same applies to terribilità. It can be interpreted as a category antithetical to classical art and can also be brought into semantic proximity with difficoltà (cf. on this and the following Plackinger 2016, 63–67). Vasari uses the term to characterise Michelangelo (see part 3 of this Companion, chap. 3.3.2.4). Terribilità serves to describe his art and suggests an unsurpassed mastery. The art theorist

Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo's line of argument is similar in nature, taking up Michelangelo's terribilità in reference to his painting of the Sistine Chapel. Terribilità proves to be a polyvalent concept, perhaps close to Hermogenes' concept of δεινóς ('terrible', or 'frightening', see part 3 of this Companion, 3.3.2.2) and to the rhetorical genus grande (Plackinger 2016, 75). Furthermore, the term is also to be understood as the ability to create an impression of cleverness through 'terrible' judgements on aesthetic value. With regard to Michelangelo's, but also Cellini's art, which resorts to both deinótes and commovere, reference should also be made to Pseudo-Longinus' De sublimitate, another ancient source received in the Cinquecento, for here a classical position emerges that interprets the sublime as a disposition towards the extraordinary and situates it within the speaker. In the case of Pseudo-Longinus, a final point of interest in relation to Cellini's transgressions is his plea for the violation of rules and the establishment of new norms. Cellini takes up all of these options, making the most of the 'pluralising' reception of antiquity typical of the Cinquecento, and mixes different rhetorical models and elements from different contexts.

In sum, Cellini starts from a figure of thought of violence, which originates from Michelangelo's artistic environment in the Cinquecento, and which was by no means always perceived as amoral, but served as a means of demonstrating power and sovereignty (the same applies to the handling of the 'furor' in the Renaissance, cf. Oster in course of print a). Primarily reserved for rulers, it is an option for action in the eyes of Cellini, who sometimes sees himself on a similar hierarchical level, a tried and tested means of achieving unrestricted, individual autonomy and admiration, but also of overcoming the strong competition among court artists. Seen against the intellectual backdrop of the Cinquecento, the theoretical as well as practical preoccupation with the concept of violence is influenced by several eclectically received, ancient rhetorical concepts; in dictionaries of the time, the terms violenza and terribilità show a semantic proximity to concepts such as 'active, superior force', or 'masculinity' with certain inherent destructive and transgressive moments. The para-classicist hybridisation of these concepts is the basis of Cellini's production of art and literature.

#### 4.3.1.2 Violence of form in Cellini's works of art: Perseus

The Perseus, created between 1545 and 1554, was commissioned by Cosimo I. Cellini's bronze statue of the hero with the head of Medusa is 3.2 metres high. The blood from both the severed head and the stump of the neck drips conspicuously towards the viewer – in whom it evokes fear, perhaps in the sense of Hermogenes' deinótes – and even gushes towards the Piazza della Signoria. The representation of an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses shows the moment when Perseus proudly holds the severed head of Medusa aloft on his outstretched arm. Contrary to the original intention, instead of a more boyish figure, a rather strong young man with detailed muscles is shown, carrying the instrument of murder – the sickle sword of Hermes – in his lowered hand. The posture of the naked body manifests the calm dignity of a victorious pose, the gaze is slightly lowered and the hero wears a dragon helmet that seems to have the face of a monstrous alter ego on the back (Bredekamp 2008, 74). The hero's face bears a peculiar resemblance to the Gorgon's head – one is wreathed in curls, the other in fearsome serpents. Lowering his eyelids, Perseus seems to be gazing at the powerful Gorgon body lying at his feet, which – unnaturally curved from the previous death throes – winds itself around the shield on which the hero stands with his supporting leg, while with the other foot he almost touches the body of the beheaded woman.

For a more differentiated interpretation, the location must also be included, because when the bronze sculpture was unveiled in the middle of the Cinquecento, the Piazza della Signoria was still the site of executions (especially beheadings). There is also a strong political dimension to the statue with regard to the patron who commissioned it: Cosimo I erected this statue as a monument to himself and his political rise under the guise of classical mythology, at the same time issuing a veiled warning. It refers to Cosimo's victory in the Battle of Montemurlo (1537) and the subsequent beheading of the vanquished republicans. Cellini's Perseus is henceforth a witness and representative of Cosimo I, who will direct the fate of the city in an absolutist manner. At this point, reference should be made to the potential equality of rulers and artists (in the eyes of some), who do not have to submit to any laws, and who both see violence as permissible when it comes to achieving their goals. Thus, Cosimo I may have seen his own creative power reflected in the art that he commissioned Cellini to produce (Bredekamp 2008). If there is something akin to a 'classical' idea of power, this joint action of patron and artist could be something similar to a 'para-classicist gesture' towards it.

In view of the spatial situation of Perseus, it is necessary to refer to another point that has already been taken up: the direct connection between competition and violence. Thus, in the Piazza della Signoria, several of the most important artists of the period are represented with their sculptures, which stand in an agonal relationship to Cellini's statue of the ancient hero. On the one hand, there is Donatello's Judith (1504), erected by the citizens on the occasion of the expulsion of the Medici from the city – in a way, an opponent over which Perseus was to triumph, and not only from an aesthetic point of view. In Donatello's sculpture, the moment before the slitting of Holofernes' throat by a woman's hand can be seen. Similarly to Perseus, here 'those paradoxical structures of violence [are manifest] that are capable of transforming the victim into the victor and the heroic deed into a tragedy' (Bredekamp 2003, 347: "[sind] jene widersinnigen Strukturen der Gewalt [manifest], die das Opfer zum Sieger und die Heldentat in eine Tragödie zu verwandeln vermögen"). The second statue in the piazza that is significant for Cellini is Michelangelo's David (1501–1504), a marble sculpture over 5 metres high, which was placed at the entrance gate of Palazzo Vecchio in its function as a symbolic guard. Vasari states that David was regarded as a symbol of freedom, in the sense of an ideology of the newly formed republic and of freedom for the inhabitants of the palace, i.e. the rulers who were to protect and govern Florence justly (Maggio 2018, 24). Cellini's Perseus had a similar function, although the latter had to serve a different ideology: that of the absolutist ruling Medici. Michelangelo's David, for all his nonchalance, is not free of attributes of violence, such as the slingshot on his shoulder, which he brings to the battle against Goliath. His hand grasps the projectile, which will be used at any moment. The prominent veins, the wrinkled forehead and the concentrated gaze of the hero also testify to the tension of an imminent battle. Terribilità is also evident here, as in Cellini's Perseus, in the overwhelming, colossal size of the two statues. Cellini's work is virtually a para-classicist variant situated between Michelangelo and Donatello:

Adunque quest'opera andrà in mezzo in fra una di Michelagnolo e una di Donato, i quali uomini hanno di virtù superato gli antichi? Adunque, che maggiore tesoro poss'io desiderare che essere messo in fra questi dua si grand'uomini? – E perché io mi sentivo d'essermi affaticato molto grandemente innegli studi di queste arte, certo mi pormessi che l'opera mia anch'ella si farebbe vedere in fra costoro [. . .]. (Cellini 1971b, 678–679)

The fiercest adversary and rival of Cellini's is Baccio Bandinelli and his statue of Hercules and Cacus (1534), the third point of reference in the Piazza della Signoria. According to Vasari, who initially used violenza in a morally neutral way when describing Bandinelli's sculpture, in order to characterise the active power of the demigod in contrast to the passive suffering of the victim, Bandinelli's marble statue was judged by contemporaries as a failed attempt to triumph over Michelangelo's David (Goffen 2007, 171–172). The fact that Bandinelli presents two colossi instead of a single statue does not change this. As opposed to Cellini's para-classicist imitation of Michelangelo, the rivalry with Bandinelli proves to be a dogged obsession beyond all boundaries. Cellini was concerned with nothing less than being the best in the production of monumental sculptures. For François I, Cellini wanted to produce an Olympic candelabra representing the gods of antiquity in bronze. Jupiter, Juno, Vulcan and Apollo were planned as sculptures destined for the royal dining room in Fontainebleau – which, after the success of the Saliera (which is housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna today), also produced by Cellini for François I, was to be understood as a continuation of activities and distinction. The scheming to which Cellini believed he had been yet again exposed to (this time by the king's mistress, Madame d'Estampes or "Madama di Tampes") are described by Cellini in the Vita. What is important is the staging by which the artist presents his work of art to the ruler. He undermines the classical norm of immobility, which is considered noble, by skilfully placing the light, despite the approaching dusk, in such a way that the statue appears as though it were alive on a rolling mechanism. And so, Madame d'Estampes' pejorative rhetoric is not successful: "queste baiate moderne". On the contrary, the king objects: "che non tanto che l'opere sue restino al paragone dell'antiche, ancora quelle superano" (Cellini 1971a, 454).

In the historical paragone of superatio of the ancients, Cellini is tied to classical antiquity, although d'Estampes' observations cannot be entirely dismissed. More astute than the king, she recognises – albeit pejoratively – the innovative aspect of Cellini's art that marks him out as a para-classicist. Cellini's triumph, however, does not last. The king subsequently gives the commission to Cellini's rival and d'Estampes' favourite, Francesco Primaticcio. This fact puts Cellini's subsequent account in a different light, which appears to be written as a compensation for his defeat at the French court. Cellini ultimately appears – even if he himself did not put it explicitly in words – as an anti-classicist who did not fit into Fontainebleau's intended classicism. Cellini's position with regard to the plurality of models and authorities of his time is not reflective or focussed on problematics, but predominantly actualising – and always adapted to his own work, his changing priorities and the needs of the day.

#### 4.3.2 Goethe's role in Cellini's popularity

Goethe is known for having paved the way for some Italian authors to become famous in Europe. Alongside Manzoni (Oster 2017), this is especially the case with Cellini. Goethe wrote a partial translation of Cellini's Vita for Schiller's Horen between 1796 and 1797, but he was only able to consult the flawed edition by Cocchi (Cellini/Cocchi 1728). Goethe therefore was never able to read the original manuscript, which only became accessible again in Florence in 1825. Printed as a serial publication in the Horen, the Vita was adapted by Goethe to an 'adventure' format, which contributed to Cellini's great popularity and later motivated above all Jacob Burckhardt's problematic stylisation of the artist. Burckhardt attributes to the Renaissance, and with it to Cellini, an individuality that has since been criticised as a modern historical invention of the nineteenth century. Jacob Burckhardt asserted in 1860:

Auch die Selbstbiographie des Benvenuto Cellini geht nicht gerade auf Beobachtungen über das eigene Innere aus. Gleichwohl schildert sie den ganzen Menschen, zum Teil wider Willen, mit einer hinreißenden Wahrheit und Fülle. Es ist wahrscheinlich kein kleines, dass Benvenuto, dessen bedeutendste Arbeiten bloßer Entwurf geblieben oder untergegangen sind, und der uns als Künstler nur im kleinen dekorativen Fach vollendet erscheint, sonst aber, wenn man bloß nach seinen erhaltenen Werken urteilt, neben so vielen größeren Zeitgenossen zurückstehen muss, – dass Benvenuto als Mensch die Menschen beschäftigen wird bis ans Ende der Tage. Es schadet ihm nicht, dass der Leser häufig ahnt, er möchte gelogen oder geprahlt haben, denn der Eindruck der gewaltig energischen, völlig durchgebildeten Natur überwiegt. Neben ihm erscheinen z.B. unsere nordischen Selbstbiographien, so viel höher ihre Tendenz und ihr sittliches Wesen bisweilen zu achten sein mag, doch als ungleich weniger vollständig in der Darstellung. Er ist ein Mensch, der Alles kann, Alles wagt und sein Maß in sich selber trägt. Ob wir es gerne hören oder nicht, es lebt in dieser Gestalt ein ganz kenntliches Urbild des modernen Menschen. (Burckhardt 1860, 365–366).

Benvenuto Cellini's auto-biography does not exactly strive for observation of his own inner self. Nevertheless, it depicts the whole man, partly against his will, with riveting truth and fulness. It is probably no small thing that Benvenuto, whose most important works have remained mere sketches or have perished, and who appears to us as an artist accomplished only in the small decorative field, but who otherwise, if one judges only by his surviving works, must take a back seat to so many greater contemporaries, – that Benvenuto as a man will occupy people until the end of time. It does him no harm that the reader often suspects that he may have lied or bragged, for the impression of a powerfully energetic, fully formed nature predominates. Next to him, for example, our Nordic autobiographies, however much higher their tendency and moral nature may sometimes have to be respected, appear incomparably less complete in their portrayal. He is a man who can do everything, dares everything and carries his measure within himself. Whether we like to hear it or not, in this figure lives a completely recognisable archetype of modern man.

The fact that Burckhardt's modern individuality, as far as Cellini is concerned, should be viewed with the greatest scepticism does not mean that – especially in view of the fact that Cellini was writing an autobiographical text – the Renaissance did not itself have its own concept of individuality. On the basis of what has been discussed in chap. 4.2.1, however, Goethe's and Burckhardt's readings are problematic, regardless of their other merits.

Goethe's knowledge of Cellini was obtained through mediated channels and he also paid no attention at all to the Perseus when visiting Italy; indeed, his travel report makes no mention of the famous bronze sculpture. Goethe also fails to view Cellini's para-classicist processes within their historical context, but instead integrates what he sees and reads into an ahistorical system of classicism, modified by the cult of genius of his time, when he writes that Cellini 'knew how to approach the highest in art' ("sich dem Höchsten der Kunst zu nähern", Goethe 1963, 189) 'with a lively sense of freedom' ("mit lebhaftem Freiheitssinn", Goethe 1963, 191). What Goethe writes in his appendix to his Cellini translation seems to conceptually anticipate the quotation from Burckhardt above:

In einer so regsamen Stadt zu einer so bedeutenden Zeit erschien ein Mann, der als Repräsentant seines Jahrhunderts und vielleicht als Repräsentant sämtlicher Menschheit gelten dürfte. Solche Naturen können als geistige Flügelmänner angesehen werden, die uns mit heftigen Äußerungen dasjenige andeuten, was durchaus, obgleich oft nur mit schwachen unkenntlichen Zügen, in jedem menschlichen Busen eingeschrieben ist. (Goethe 1963, 189)

In such a lively city at such an important time, a man appeared who could be regarded as the representative of his century and perhaps as the representative of all humanity. Such natures can be regarded as spiritual wingmen, who indicate to us with fierce expressions that which is definitely inscribed, although often only with faint unrecognisable traits, in every human bosom.

In Goethe's military jargon, the wingman is the great foreman who must push forward with exaggerated energy in order to set an example for all the others. Apparently, it was not least his training as a goldsmith that, in Goethe's eyes, guaranteed that Cellini would become the forerunner of excellence in Italy. In a letter to Meyer dated 8.2.1796, Goethe writes:

Italien lag in dem 15. Jahrhundert mit der übrigen Welt noch in der Barberey. Der Barbar weiß die Kunst nicht zu schätzen, als in so fern sie ihm unmittelbar zur Zierde dient, daher war die Goldschmiedearbeit in jenen Zeiten schon so weit getrieben, als man mit den übrigen noch so sehr zurück war und aus den Werkstätten der Goldschmiede gingen durch äussere Anlässe und Aufmunterung die ersten trefflichen Meister anderer Künste hervor. (Goethe 1892, 22)

In the fifteenth century, Italy was still barbarian with the rest of the world. The barbarian does not appreciate art except in so far as it serves him directly as an adornment, therefore the goldsmith's work was already so far advanced in those times, when one was still so much behind with the others, and from the workshops of the goldsmiths the first excellent masters of other arts emerged through external causes and encouragement.

In this context, it must be emphasised that in Goethe's time there was no concept of a longue durée of the Renaissance era such as the one we are familiar with today. Goethe was not particularly clear on what he classified as belonging to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In addition, Goethe did not visit Florence and the great works of art there – including Cellini's Perseus – on his visit to Italy, which was something he later regretted. This is all connected to the fact that Goethe was fixated on Rome as the bearer of classical antiquity. This explains his closeness to Petrarch (and his scepticism towards Dante) and the inadequate evaluation of the Middle Ages and humanism in the fifteenth century. Goethe's Cellini project arose in connection with a second major journey through Italy that the author planned but never carried out. Along with the aforementioned Johann Heinrich Meyer, Goethe planned to write an encyclopaedic cultural history of Italy – a plan that never came to fruition. For this reason, Goethe spent a lot of time analysing the Florentine Renaissance and the history of Florence in the sixteenth century.

Thus, Goethe could not judge Cellini's art from personal experience; instead, he occupied himself with the textual evidence available within the Vita. In 1795, he produced a first, incomplete version of the Vita, which appeared in Schiller's aforementioned Horen in 1796–1797. In the Tag- und Jahresheften for the year 1797, Goethe writes:

Als ich mich in die Kunstgeschichte von Florenz einarbeitete, ward mir Cellini wichtig, und ich faßte, um mich dort recht einzubürgern, gern den Entschluß seine Selbstbiographie zu übersetzen; besonders weil sie Schillern zu den Horen brauchbar schien. (Goethe 1895, 41).

When I became acquainted with the history of art in Florence, Cellini became important to me, and I gladly decided to translate his autobiography, especially because it seemed useful to Schiller for the Horen.

The following year the text was revised and in 1803 the final version was published by Cotta, with an additional appendix of material. However, the Cellini translation is not only exceptional in terms of time, but also in terms of page count. It comprises almost twice as many pages as all of Goethe's other translations combined. Goethe's next largest translation, Diderot's Neveu de Rameau, only took him from November 1804 to February 1805 to write. Goethe owned a reprint of the aforementioned 1728 edition of Cellini's Vita by Cocchi, which he had acquired in 1795. Unlike Cocchi, Goethe divided the text into four books. He divided these into 10 to 13 chapters each and prefaced each with a summary. In addition, he omitted some of the poems, such as the opening sonnet or the terzina poem on Cellini's incarceration. In this way, Goethe followed the outline of Thomas Nugent's English translation dating from 1771. Goethe has been accused of corrupting the Italian two-part division with his four parts, but this criticism deliberately overlooked the fact that the usual Italian division into two parts does not in any way derive from Cellini's autograph, which is relatively undifferentiated as to its internal structure.

For Goethe, his activities as a poet and translator are closely related in a poetological sequence of thought whose priorities may not render criticisms of his translations obsolete, but also resulted in his viewing them as non-urgent in nature; Karl Vossler has been prominent amongst those who have enumerated the various misunderstandings and mistakes that exist in Goethe's translation (Vossler 1899). Of more importance for questions relating to anti-classicism or para-classicism are the functional connections between identity and alterity, as they are also expressed in the study scene in Faust. However, Goethe was chiefly concerned with an aesthetic faithfulness to meaning, which in turn means that fidelity to literal meaning cannot always be expected. The linguistic pitfalls of the Vita are immense, ranging from convoluted syntax to unclear, hermeticseeming utterances by Cellini to difficult Florentine dialect and vulgarisms in expression. It was Karl Vossler who again compiled and analysed these linguistic phenomena (Vossler 1899). It could be stated that Goethe's undoubtedly commendable efforts on behalf of Cellini immensely enhanced the latter's fame, but at the price of ascribing an ahistorical, diffuse anti-classicism to him– an image that has prevailed to this day. Based on Goethe's 'ideal image of the artist' (Herding 2003), works such as Hector Berlioz's Cellini opera have subsequently emerged, in which Cellini's para-classicism continues to be ignored in favour of an aesthetic of individual genius, and nineteenth-century historicism painted as a one-sided image of an anthropocentric Renaissance in the wake of Burckhardt.

### 4.3.3 Para-classicism in works by other authors: Cicalamenti del Grappa

The anonymously published Cicalamenti del Grappa intorno al sonetto "Poi che mia speme è lunga a venir troppo." Dove si ciarla allungo delle lodi delle donne et del mal francioso was published in Mantua in 1545 (cf. on the following Oster 2012/13). The date is significant because 1545 is the year of the beginning of the Council of Trent, in the wake of which, in a reaction to the Reformation, fundamental reforms took place within the Catholic church up until 1563, and, at the same time, an increased classicism as a reaction to perceived anti-classicist and anti-normative tendencies was set in motion.

The authorship of the Cicalamenti del Grappa is disputed. Possible authors for the pseudonym "Grappa" (for the sake of simplicity, the author of the text will be referred to as such in the following) include Grazzini, Gamba, Aretino, Beccuti and Firenzuola. The authorship of Grazzini is favoured by Vincenzo Lancetti (Lancetti 1836, 133–134). Giovan Mario Crescimbeni, on the other hand, argues that "Angiolo Firenzuola" is the author of the text (Crescimbeni 1698, 327). The history of the word grappa is also shrouded in uncertainty. The name could be a variation of the Italian graffa, 'parenthesis', derived from the Greek parentìthemi ('frappongo' in Italian). Against this background, the Cicalamenti del Grappa could be understood as an (ironic) 'parenthetical remark' added to the tradition of scholarly commentary within early modern academic circles. But a reference to the alcoholic distillate of grappa is also conceivable, and so the commentary and the provocative statements contained within it, could be regarded as being based in an alternate reality created by the effect of strong drink, and thus not particularly intellectually punishing (Oster 2012/13, 151).

This curious text is meant to be an erudite commentary on sonnet 88 of Petrarch's Canzoniere. It advances the following provocative thesis: Petrarch caught syphilis, the "mal francioso" of the title, from his beloved Laura. After an unflattering dedication to a Signora Antea Arcifanfana, who is a veritable 'cemetery of French disease' ("cimitero di mal francioso"; Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 1v.), an extended introduction follows in which Petrarch's great love is drastically interpreted as gratitude for the beautiful gift of venereal disease, as a kind of catalyst of all the virtues and arts. To this end, a select catalogue of supposed virtues of syphilis is compiled. Petrarch's sonnet is reproduced with typographical care on sheet 16r./17v. of the first edition and is analysed in terms of style and content on the following pages.

To classify the Cicalamenti del Grappa solely as a form of desultory anti-Petrarchism because of its ostentatiously displayed sexual innuendo would be wrong. On closer examination, the text maintains a relationship with the object of its travesty – the Canzoniere – that can aptly be described as anti-classicist, or more precisely, para-classicist. It is not a case of what in this volume is termed explicit anti-classicism (as in the genre of paradoxical praise), nor is it a case of alternative classicism. The humorous register of the Cicalamenti del Grappa can only fully unfold if an evasion into alternative is models avoided. Instead, there is a clear reference to Petrarch, but this is not limited to parody: rather, the explosive power of comic writing is held in a para-classicist balance. Petrarch is by no means dismissed as the founder of a cultural concept of love, even though the author of the Cicalamenti del Grappa openly mocks the systematic and insistent imitation practised by the Petrarchists. In (pseudo)encomiastic passages, the text takes up the doxographic discourse networks (politics, moral philosophy, medicine) of Petrarchism and attempts to expose them as a freaky quirk of their authors by means of cunning reversals of texture.

The Cicalamenti del Grappa were highly praised for their refined idioms: "Osceno libricciuolo scritto da uomo nella lingua peritissimo" (Gamba 1839, 437). Although its form of writing is rather special, the text maintains obvious relationships with other narrative or colloquial genres of discourse. There are echoes of the ancient priapea, thus named for the god of gardens and fertility, Priapos, which celebrated the imposing (or supposedly imposing) dimensions of male genitalia (Buchheit 1962). These genera were by no means sanctioned as classical even in antiquity itself, and in the Renaissance, an accumulated scepticism towards the genre can be detected. Anti-classicist authors countered this scepticism with offensively erotic poems, singing the praises of the garden god Priapus and virtuously staging the double coding of the fruits mentioned within them (representing female and male genitalia, among other things). A prominent Renaissance example is Nicolò Franco's Priapeia (Oster 2012/13, 147). Read in this context, the title of the "Cicalamenti" is also more than ambiguous. It represents the 'crazy crickets' contained within the text itself, something which openly announces its humorous nature from the first word of the title. But the cicala also connotes the staged 'chatty' style of the writing of this 'loquacious' text and, moreover, colloquially, the non-verbal 'communication' of the male genitalia (in regional language, the lively chirping of the grasshopper stands for the acrobatic movimento of the virile sex). In this respect, the cricket is not only able to sing praise, but also to lament, which is expressed in the (ironic) interconnection of the semantics of cicala ('cricket') and lamenti ('laments'): Cicalamenti.

The anti-classicist tendency of the traditional, vernacular Canto carnascialesco contributes to this kind of writing, as this form preferred erotic ambivalence, for example in the area of 'craftsmanship', where the work and activity of the hands was doubly coded. A prominent example is Benedetto Varchi's Canto degli arcolai ('The Song of the Wool Winders'). Crudity and obscenity can also be found in Francesco Maria Molza's Capitolo in lode dei fichi, which was subsequently taken up by Annibal Caro under the title La ficheide and published with a learned commentary using the pseudonym of Ser Agresto da Ficaruolo. Also famous is the dialogue La cazzaria by Antonio Vignali (who was known as "Arsiccio Intronato"), which imitates the style of the academies. Almost all of these texts, in whose tradition the Cicalamenti del Grappa are to be located, are fictional apologias of the puttanesco sesso. 'Grappa' attempts a transformation of imitatio veterum, the imitation of the optimi, in a para-classicist counter-commentary. With this, he apparently wants to catapult himself to the top of the list of anticlassicist writers, but with ostensibly serious intentions and in a mock serious style of writing. This is another reason why the learned academies play an important role in the Cicalamenti del Grappa. The humanistic commentary transforms itself into a para-classicist commentary, not least by treating its subject matter with an inverse aptum. The scholarly commentary of the Cicalamenti del Grappa combines its elitist origins with a praise of the profane and the base. With this, 'Grappa' harpoons another tradition, this time decidedly poetic. With the exaltation of venal love under the sign of syphilis, the author turns against the naïve and 'sincere' forms of love associated with the bucolic genres and praises prostitution, the "maggior mostro", as Tasso will later call it (Tasso 1824, 48). The artifice of bucolic love turns dissonant in the work of 'Grappa' because the pastoral is no longer able to convince with its stereotypical conventions. The authorities of 'Grappa', on the other hand, are those who have sung about syphilis in an

exemplary manner: Girolamo Fracastoro with his didactic poem Sifilide ossia del mal francese or Giovan Francesco Bini with a Capitolo in lode del malfrancese, as well as Agnolo Firenzuola in his Capitolo in lode del legno santo (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 20v.).

What the Cicalamenti del Grappa stage is a pointed contrast to both academic Petrarchism (in the wake of Pietro Bembo) and anti-Petrarchism (associated with Berni). The author names or alludes to ancient and vernacular cultures (he writes explicitly – and this too is in parallel with Cellini – of artists, not merely writers), not only of jocular character, but also representatives of 'serious' literature.

The very first pages of the Cicalamenti del Grappa in the original edition of 1545 give an impression of the constitution of the work. The language demands a certain amount of literary competence from the (modern) reader, because – similar to Rabelais in Gargantua et Pantagruel – it juggles with word cascades and fantasy expressions. The Cicalamenti del Grappa begin with the following words:

Chi volevate voi (magnifichissima & lustrissima signora) che fesse fede di quanto ciarlo intorno a questo sonetto, se non produceva voi per testimone, la quale sete apunto un cimitero di mal francioso? Il quale s'è con voi domesticato & infratellito di modo, che n'avete messo il legno d'India in estrema desperatione; per la cui mercè (parlo del mal francioso) voi sete fregiata & riccamata di tante virtù, che andate per bocca delle brigate con maggior riputatione di quello che non va per la bocca de' preti il Tedeum. Eccovi la perfettissima nel suono della cornamusa: eccovi in quel di pedale arcidivina: intorno al grattar la vivola, che vi si può opporre? Del vostro pizzicar l'arpa, che vi si può dire? Quanto spetta poi al toccar il ciembalo non è dubbio che fate andar le persone coeli coelorum. Ma chi non fanno stringere le labra & increspar le ciglia le vostre divine opere, come i sognetti, li strenfiotti, le fistole e i capogiroli? (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 2v./3r.)

With the "legno d'India", the very 'wood' is mentioned (see Oster 2012/13, 152), something which Cellini also repeatedly invokes in his Vita as a remedy against venereal diseases. Similar to the aforementioned Canto degli arcolai by Varchi and Cellini's Vita, the erotic double coding of the supposed craft (in this case: the virtuoso handling of various instruments or erotic techniques) is evident. Equally evident at the level of genre references is the allusion to the paradoxical encomium, which in antiquity was located in the doctrine of epideixis, and praises unusual or lowly phenomena ('paradoxa': Lukian's Praise of the fly, for example) or serious evils ('adoxa': such as Favorinus' The praise of quarto fever) – an accomplishment which, incidentally, was already considered proof of poetic ingenuity in a Renaissance classic which was not at all regarded as having anti-classicist leanings, namely Castiglione's Cortegiano (II, XVII). At the beginning of the Cicalamenti del Grappa ("Filostroccola. In Vece di Proemio"), 'Grappa' critically counters the complacent assessment of his own age as a classical one with crude vocabulary:

A me pare, & credo che paja così ancho a voi (ingeniosissimi Balordi), che questa nostra felicissima età sia molto brava & molto sfoggiata; dico tanto che tutte le passate non sarebbono buone per cavarle (come si dice) gli stivali. Se quell'età di Saturno si chiamò aurea & felice perchè gli uomini andavano sbracati & mangiavano quelle porcherie, aurea & felice si può hora chiamare la vita de'furfanti che vivono in cotal guisa, & dormono senza paura di esser rubati, & fanno quell'altra cosa anchora dove si truovano. Ma le son baje a credere che la natura non si risenta dell'ingiurie che fa il freddo e 'l caldo alle carni ignude, de' torti che fanno alla gola i cattivi bocconi, lasciando i ghiotti; degl'incomodi che si fa patire agli apetiti lussuriosi, potendoli satiar con comodo & agiatamente. Io per me non saprei che si potesse dir altro d'uno se non che anfanasse a sanità, & che avesse date le cervella a rimpedulare, il quale quando il freddo più crudelmente ci tormenta, volesse andare più tosto ignudo che bene impellicionato; [. . .]. (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 4r./5v.)

After numerous – and ostentatiously staged – adjournments and procrastinations, the actual subject of the treatise announced in the title arises, Petrarch's sonnet 88 from the Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta (RVF). The poem is first printed in full length:

Poi che mia speme è lunga à venir troppo Et de la uita il trappassar si corto; Vorreimi à miglior tempo esser accorto, Per fuggir dietro più, che di galoppo; Et fuggo anchor così debile & zoppo Da l'un de lati, oue 'l desio m' hà storto, Sicuro homai: mà pur nel uiso porto Segni ch'io presi à l'amoroso intoppo. Ond'io consiglio uoi, che siete in uia, Volgete i passi: & uoi, ch' amor auampa, Mon (sic) u'indugiate sù l'estremo ardore: Che perch' io uiua; di mille vn non scampa, Era ben forte la nemica mia; Et lei uid' io ferita in mezzo 'l cuore. (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 16v./17r.)

In this poem, we find characteristics typical of Petrarch, such as an enumerative structure ending in a conclusion; the suffering of the lover; the origin of his moral suffering, rendered by a physical image (the lover's 'lame side', which, however, in this case is treated literally by the author of the Cicalamenti del Grappa who ascribes a double meaning to it). Thus, for the commentator, the dolori are not only mental but first and foremost somatic, and they are so intense that they tend to override the 'gioia' of the pain of love, and also make the lady's unattainability appear to be a secondary problem. The author of the Cicalamenti del Grappa must have had Francesco Berni's famous anti-Petrarchist "Sonetto delle puttane" in mind, which stages the lover in the "inferno" (v. 6), where "non è maggior pena" (v. 6), and where "un sospetto crudel del mal Franzese" (v. 9) plays a leading role, the "eterno onor del puttanesco sesso" (v. 14) being drastically transformed into something obscene in the final verses (cf. Schulz-Buschhaus 1975). In the Cicalamenti, Berni's satirical thrust is replaced by a para-classicist reversal of ideal norms. Thus, Petrarch's theme of tired hope is turned into its burlesque opposite: the (love) disease is not one of the heart, but a venereal disease, for which the poet should be grateful, however, since it has inspired his immense productivity. Hopelessness is thus negated, yet not in a forced anti-classicist gesture, but as a remembrance of a norm which is thereby affirmed. The multiplicity of the amorous encounters of a syphilitic "divinissimo Petrarcha" (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 15v.) and hence of an inconstant lover sensualises the concept of love found in Petrarch and Bembo, a paraclassicist development which the Cicalamenti del Grappa humorously pass off as an artful extension of the poetics of imitatio. The comic contrasts resulting from this obviously depend on the continued existence of an idealising version of love.

These effects could be viewed as an ultimately irrelevant variant of the general interdependence of normativity and deviation. However, this does not apply to the Cicalamenti del Grappa, if only because they break loose from the structural restrictions of the genre of commentary. Traditionally, the commentary genre is characterised by the fact that the text commented upon is in a way 'continued' in the commentary. As opposed to this, the Cicalamenti del Grappa multiply and expand the technical procedures of the commentary genre and overstretch its boundaries, at the same time breaking away from the ideology of Petrarch's poem. For only at first glance does 'Grappa' follow the rules of the commentary – by examining Petrarch's sonnet line by line and word by word and commenting on it in a (pseudo-) affirmatory manner. However, he exaggerates the need for explanation so excessively that the reader forms an impression of opaqueness, of a para-classicist suspension of the possibility of true understanding or knowledge. The Cicalamenti del Grappa take up Petrarch's pseudo-autobiographical stylisation and blend this with anti-classical formulas so as to blow the lid off the poet's self-fashioning, revealing it as nothing but a form of sophisticated camouflage. In the process, 'Grappa' the commentator appears as an anachronistic interlocutor across the times, for he not only lectures the readers in the Cinquecento, but also retrospectively addresses Petrarch himself in a patronising manner, enlightening him about his ingratitude towards syphilis by means of a didactic digression. 'Grappa' thereby eradicates the chronological structure of exemplary past and imitative present which serves as the cornerstone to Petrarchism.

The serious system of reference to classical Petrarchism is thus inverted, but – and this is crucial for what we understand by para-classicism – not completely abandoned: it is questioned, suspended. In the Cicalamenti del Grappa, in fact, it becomes questionable as to what the actual model function of Petrarch and the ancients he favours should be or remain. The Canzoniere is no longer imitated by the author in the sign of aemulatio, but demands a competent commentary on relevant questions, a gloss which in turn receives its own para-classicist dignity. The normative moral claims of the Canzoniere thus become a pseudodiscourse, and Petrarch's poetry can only be freed from its aporetic situation by the argumentative aids of a para-classicist commentary. For 'Grappa' is erudite. He ostentatiously displays his academic knowledge; and he achieves this above all by bringing up the classics page by page. The reader is confronted with a multitude of luminaries: from "Batracomiomachia", "Homero", "Mastro Vergilio" to "Oratio", with an "Lucanum quaeras" thrown in, and up to "Ariosto" and "Dolce" (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 5r./v.–6r.). The radical amplification of the physical dimension turns not only against an idealisation of Petrarch, but also against the idea of Plato as an authority within the field, who is constantly invoked in the text as the guardian of an ephemeral world of ideas. The author of the Cicalamenti del Grappa, however, does not question tradition in toto in this respect either. Unambiguous positions are nowhere to be found in this very elegantly-argued text, which openly exhibits its references and merely denies the absolute authorisation of a single model. It is about a redefinition of what can be 'classical' in the Cinquecento.

The Cicalamenti del Grappa, which at first sight comes across as a harmless, mundane farce, thus turns out to be a composition with serious tendencies that set themselves apart from both Petrarchist and anti-Petrarchist discourses, maintaining a para-classicist distance. 'Grappa' relies on the plurality of theory options, playing up one of them against the other and ultimately including even himself in his constant ironising of reference sources.

The Cicalamenti are more than just a parody or a mere variation of a basic model. 'Grappa' breaks with an entire tradition of Petrarch commentaries, from Filelfo's allegorising to Vellutello's idealising biography. In doing so, he proves that he is a true follower of Petrarch, who after all rethought classical antiquity as a lost 'other', believing it needed to be interpreted, analysed and defined on its own terms. A para-classicist relativity of interpretations is brought to bear against the familiar, the 'classical.'

In this commentary, the learned scholar and the syphilitic both ultimately operate under the sign of an 'other' classicism, which elaborates basic anthropological constants of human amorous behaviour. These are anchored in human nature itself, and no longer in a metaphysical principle. With regard to this, there is a clear difference from Petrarch, for Petrarch thought of the things he deemed remarkable – that is: classical, immaculate beauty rather than venereal

disease – in ethical categories. Only in this way could the humanitas of the classical world be opened up and shine in new splendour in the seemingly effortless elegance of Petrarch's own classicism. The Cicalamenti del Grappa opt for the contrary, for a drastic language reminiscent of passages from Dante's Inferno. It is true that Dante – unlike Petrarch and Boccaccio – is not, or hardly ever, explicitly addressed in 'Grappa' but the Cicalamenti's ostentation of physical love and its contagious consequences implicitly rejects both Dante's lofty ideals of love and Petrarch's moral criticism of it. Earthly love is no longer a merely tolerated stopover on the way to caritas, but sexual realism is the goal and pivot of a form of poetry directed towards earthly values and thus reminiscent of Boccaccio: "Et è il vero, & la ragione è fisica" (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 26v.). The many other references to Boccaccio are hardly coincidental in this context, for Petrarch's literary friend becomes the necessary complement of a comprehensive 'human condition' in the Cicalamenti del Grappa, which includes the physical world (see also Oster 2012/13, 164).

The Cicalamenti del Grappa radically question the supposedly natural appropriateness of speech in Renaissance classicism as well as the monolithic structure of its system of models and authorities; they champion plurality. The fact that the Cicalamenti del Grappa appeared anonymously could well be interpreted as evidence of this objective: anonymity absorbs the notoriously overpowering concept of authorship, of an authorial figure, even of the commentator himself. The commentary of the Cicalamenti del Grappa is a critical gloss on authorship and its permament strain of poetic aemulatio, but also on the tradition of commentary itself.

The staged anonymity of the Cicalamenti del Grappa is part of its poetic programme. Whether Beccuti or another advocate and editor of Berni (for example, Antonfrancesco Grazzini) was the author of the text: ultimately, it is the texture itself that gives clear indications that Francesco Berni – despite all the criticism that is voiced against him – is to be installed besides Petrarch as one of several parallel model authors. But as opposed to the Petrarchist practice of openly canonising a single model author, Berni's role is only proclaimed between the lines – and never in all seriousness, merely as a possible alternative reference – alongside others (Ruzante, Folengo, Aretino).

Even though we cannot speak of a closed system of anti-classicist writing, such texts should not be regarded merely as sporadic voices in the textual panorama of the Cinquecento. The fact that there is no thematic or structural continuity in para-classicist texts is part of their agenda and, in the case of the Cicalamenti del Grappa, as well as in Cellini's case, this mode of writing was probably directed against the academic humanism prevalent at that time, which, under the sign of an erudite cult of antiquity, claimed superiority within the contemporary system of knowledge. The Cicalamenti del Grappa satirise a whole series of ancient authors as well as the uncritical and detached admiration they were subjected to in the Cinquecento. In this way, texts such as the Cicalamenti not only negate Petrarchism, they also distance themselves from what Schulz-Buschhaus (1986) has characterised as "a-petrarkistisch", a serious, non parodic style indifferent to the claims of Petrarchism and often following a hedonistic, sensual conception of love inherited from antiquity (Anthologia graeca, Ovid, Horace, Catullus).

The burlesque style, on the other hand, whose concept of an apparent 'artlessness' characterises the Cicalamenti del Grappa, originates from the Middle Ages and thus from a culture that Petrarch and the humanists are known to have despised. As far as the semantics and the affiliation of the Cicalamenti del Grappa to the genera dicendi are concerned, the text is ambivalent, for the signals of affiliation to the genus humilis are contaminated with artificial lexemes and elaborate hyperboles on the one hand and obscene innuendo on the other. While declining to follow the classicist poetics of aemulatio, they situate themselves as poetry on a par with the Petrarchists' and, for their part, cultivate such ambitious stylistics and complex concepts that one could refer to an independent and balanced para-classicism. This para-classicism mediates between the extremes of classicism and anticlassicism, it is never openly exhibited, but instead follows an elegant sprezzatura – and it is, in spite of its comic character, 'seriously' constructive poetry beyond mere ridicule: "Et viva la Balordia in secula seculorum" (Cicalamenti del Grappa 1545, 27r.).

### 4.4 Conclusion

Cellini's para-classicist writing and art, like his metallurgy, often appears as elusive, extremely iridescent material, which deliberately eludes the univocal in order to remain flexibly manageable. Despite its frequent contradictions, its ambiguity and opacity, even to the point of obscurity in places, Cellini's paraclassicism seeks a connection to a classical canon. Yet he eschews fixed hierarchies in favour of flexibility. This form of para-classicism belongs to the field of Cinquecento anti-classicism, whose expressivity is to be clearly distinguished from the styles and forms of later epochs (Mannerism, Baroque). Unlike in 'alternative classicism' (see part 3 of this Companion), para-classicism cannot dispense with gestures of opposition to classical models, which, however, are at the same time objects of aggressive aemulatio. Cellini's is an offensive paragone in the sense of a confrontational juxtaposition that can, however, instantaneously turn into gestures of appeasement when Cellini realises he has gone too far in his transgressions. When Cellini realises that his attempt at aemulatio is not successful, he opts for a good-natured compromise: Perseus then stands 'next to' (para) Michelangelo's and Donatello's sculptures in a neighbourly fashion – in an urban space of equal canonicity. In doing so, Cellini relies on the action of time: time will tell whose work will be considered classical in the future.

However, para-classicist procedures are just as highly stylised as their 'sublime' counterparts or neighbours, and on this level correspondence already plays an important role. The chief difference lies in how this relationship is interpreted. Unlike in Petrarchism, it is never viewed as imitative dependence. This also applies to the author's own para-classicist writing, should it threaten to develop into a fixed agenda. Para-classicism resists any attempt to establish norms, even for para-classicism itself. It is thus less of a direct opposition to a certain, concrete authority or a given classicism, even if the ostensible polemics of the para-classicist texts pretend this in order to initially attract the reader. Rather, para-classicism (which itself is composed of heterogeneous text types) opposes absolutist mono-literary systems of classicism in general.

With regard to Benvenuto Cellini, three descriptive dimensions can be used to describe his brand of para-classicism:

a) Spatial: throughout his life, Cellini worried about not receiving enough attention from actual or potential patrons. It should not be forgotten that Cellini, as a sculptor and goldsmith, was much more dependent on monetary support for his material expenditure than, say, a poet. The motto "Pecunia nervus rerum est" therefore applies here in particular (Stolleis 1983, 63–65). It is true that Cellini considers himself an important writer, however, his view that this branch of his profession is really only a side-line to his fame is not wrong. With regard to his patrons, spatial presence is important when dealing with rivals, for example in Florence (Medici), Rome (popes), and France (François I). In his travels between Italy and France, Cellini presents himself as an equal to his more established competitors, who lay claim to classicist status. With regard to these demarcation lines (and transgressions), he seldom penetrates the centre of classicist esteem, but walks along 'beside' it (para) in search of synergies and alliances. The fact that Cellini opportunistically complied with different powers, indiscriminately changing his affiliations and locations and always searching for fame, was criticised frequently both by contemporaries and later observers.

b) Temporal: 'Conversely, without classics there can be no classicists. What is different here is the time index: one 'is' a classicist, one 'becomes' a classic, or one ceases to be one in the course of history.' (Föcking/Schindler 2020, 11: "Umgekehrt kann es ohne Klassiker keine Klassizisten geben. Unterschiedlich ist dabei der Zeitindex: Klassizist 'ist' man, Klassiker 'wird' man, oder man hört im Verlauf der Geschichte auf, es zu sein."). Cellini proves to be an artist who consistently followed Machiavelli's recommendation to seize the opportunity (occasione) courageously (Schröder 2004, 161). He even resolutely 'recodes' moments that could be to his disadvantage. An example of this is the described fight with the French king's mistress, Madame d'Estampes. Cellini even murders according to a timetable. Here, Cellini acts in an uncompromisingly anti-normative manner both ethically and with respect to decorum, but stylises his actions in a para-classicist perspective in the written retrospective of the Vita. Cellini's manipulation of the historically available literary genres creates the impression that the typically Renaissance sensation of a break in continuity (between antiquity and its revival in the present, see Oster 2008) does not affect him. As far as genres are concerned, the Vita and the Rime in part continue traditional patterns. The discontinuity is found more in the rhetorical register, in the use of decorum or aptum.

c) Transgression beyond the spatial-temporal axes. Cellini's anti-classicism always blossoms in its purest form where he has to assert himself against something or someone. Resistances to be overcome are those of the papal curia, the court, but also the resistance of materials (marble, bronze, gold). And in Cellini's view, these resistances are only there to be overcome: "tempo da militare, non da statuare" (Cellini 1971a, 465). The bellicose vocabulary is not due to chance, as has become clear from his remarks on power and violence. The subversive transgressions refer to almost all axiological areas of discourse: Cellini transgresses aesthetic, geographical, economic, sexual or social, moral and legal demarcations. In doing so, he leaves open whether what his contemporaries perceive as anti-classicist violations are meant to be such, or whether he uses the ambiguity of para-classicism as a springboard from which to rise to the level of 'real classics'. With Homi Bhabha, Cellini's approach can be seen in a "third space" with hybrid structures (Bhabha 2004, 55). Here, classicism and anti-classicism do not confront each other as substantially different, but rather interpenetrate each other without, however, achieving something like dialectical mediation or a fusion of differences. Rather, interactions and processes of hybridisation counteract rigid identities. In this sense, problematic interferences between different models are no cause for irritation for Cellini. His incommensurable texts are at odds with the tendencies both of authorisation and of pluralisation (as described by the collaborative research centre SFB 573 "Pluralisation and Authority in the Early Modern Period"; http://www.sfb-frueheneu zeit.uni-muenchen.de/). He forces the superimposition of various classicisms – from antiquity to the Bible – to a point that not only shatters the respective texts, but also Cellini's credibility in the contemporary discourse panorama.

That Cellini's brand of para-classicism operates mostly on the level of decorum may have something to do with the fact that as a 'persona non grata' he strives for social rehabilitation. The search for aptum is supposed to compensate for disproportions and generate agreement or at least correspondences. Appropriateness is a universal, harmonising principle, which, however, often collides with Cellini's use of allegory: while aptum aims at probability, the object of allegory is truth. In Cellini, however, these demarcations become skewed: his allegories are merely probable or even improbable (like the childhood experiences described in the Vita), and Cellini's aptum often turns out to be an embittered claim to be right. This results in further confrontations between Cellini and his environment and even in his texts, which sometimes fail to communicate and resort to para-classicist discourses of eccentric self-empowerment. It is fitting that Cellini repeatedly claims new roles for himself within the power structures of his various patrons, but also in his texts. Be it the courageous knight in the Vita, the personal union of craftsman and scholar in the treatises, or the poet in the Rime: Cellini undermines any accusation of inappropriate evaluation of himself as a 'consensus omnium' by leaving no doubt that he has no intention of changing himself or his Vita. As someone who has experienced what might be called the greatest of all para-classicist events – a direct encounter with the divine in the dungeon – Cellini, like Dante, has escaped the selva oscura and, by means of his works of art, elevates himself to the divina foresta.

It is remarkable that Cellini, with his numerous borrowings from the Middle Ages (not least as far as the genres in the Vita are concerned), which already seemed outdated during his lifetime, was subsequently declared a modernist. This statement does not deny that Cellini participated equally in the reception of antiquity during his lifetime. He achieved this historical balancing act by conceiving normativity as anachronism and instead conceiving classicism as universalisation and singularisation. By placing the unfamiliar or shocking on an equal footing with the familiar, he sidestepped the binary opposition of the classical and the non-classical. He cultivated the alterity of para-classicism, whose elastic design may seem opportunistic, but ultimately constituted one that allowed Cellini to highlight the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere and the ability of disregarding dogmatic canonisations contained within it, with a gesture that was indeed modern.

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### Index nominum

Achillini, Giovanni Filoteo 180 Addison, Joseph 232 Adrian VI (pope) 54 Alamanni, Lodovico 184 Alamanni, Luigi 182, 197 Alberti, Leon Battista 181, 254 Albizzi. See degli Albizzi Alcionio, Pietro 52 Alighieri, Dante 8, 11, 38, 62, 66, 89, 96–97, 141, 150, 154, 166, 167–232, 239, 243, 257, 265, 274, 278 Angelico, Michelangelo (Cintio Pierio) 34 Angiolieri, Cecco 17 Apuleius (Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis) 184–187 Aquilano, Giovanni 159, 166 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas Aragona, Tullia d' 46, 48 Arcano, Giovanni Mauro d' 19–24, 26, 30–31, 50–51 Aretino, Pietro 2, 10–11, 20, 22–23, 33, 45–46, 52, 54, 56–65, 68–74, 79–86, 88–89, 92–103, 234, 239, 240, 255, 267, 274 Argiroglotto, Iano 34–35, 43 Ariosto, Ludovico 25–27, 30, 38, 83, 89, 95, 144, 174, 182, 187, 197–200, 210, 227, 232, 252–253, 273 Aristarco (Palemone) 34 Aristotle (Ἀριστοτέλης/Aristotélēs) 1, 5–8, 11, 106, 110–113, 115, 117–122, 127, 133, 178–179, 205–210 Arnulf of Leuven 123 Augurelli, Giovanni Aurelio 66 Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis) 191–192, 239 Ballerina, Elena 94 Bandinelli, Baccio 236–237, 262 Barignano, Pietro 71 Baronio, Cesare 131

Bellentani, Giovanni Francesco 64 Bellincioni, Bernardo 54 Belo, Francesco 33, 37 Bembo, Pietro 5, 7–10, 15, 17–18, 28, 30, 37, 43–45, 49, 66, 71, 76, 79, 82, 100, 135–137, 142, 170–178, 196–197, 202, 213–217, 222, 244–245, 249, 270, 272 Benedetto da Firenze. See Luschino Benivieni, Girolamo 171–172 Bentivoglio, Ercole 22, 27 Benucci, Lattanzio 176 Beolco. See Ruzante Berni, Francesco 2, 10, 14–32, 50, 52, 76–79, 82–83, 85–86, 93, 96, 102–103, 182, 240, 270–272, 274 Bettinelli, Saverio 231–232 Bindoni, Agostino 22 Bini, Giovan Francesco 20–23, 270 Bladius, Antonius 105 Boccaccio, Giovanni 5, 81–82, 89, 97, 102, 135, 141, 144, 171, 173, 179–180, 215, 231, 238–239, 253, 274 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 239 Boiardo, Matteo Maria 29–30, 197 Boileau, Nicolas 232 Borghini, Vincenzo 175–176, 255–256 Borgia, Girolamo 88 Bozzi, Paolo 106, 112, 114, 118, 129, 133 Brocardo, Antonio 8, 61 Bronzino, Agnolo 22–24, 143, 253 Brunetti, Orazio 99 Bruni, Leonardo 169 Bruno, Giordano 8 Bruno S.J., Vincenzo 124, 129 Bulgarini, Belisario 35 Buonarroti, Michelangelo 2, 7–9, 30, 34, 82, 134, 217–223, 233–234, 236–238, 240, 244, 246, 250, 253–257, 259–260, 262, 276 Burchiello (Domenico di Giovanni) 18, 27–28, 54 Burke, Edmund 232 Burckhardt, Jacob 263–265, 267

Bartolomeo detto l'Imperador 84 Battiferri, Laura 6, 134, 253

Caccia, Giovanni Agostino 22 Calcagnini, Celio 199 Calmeta, Vincenzo 182 Calvo, Francesco Minizio 22 Campanella, Tommaso 113 Caporali, Cesare 22–23 Carafa, Oliviero 57 Cardano, Girolamo 236–237 Carli, Bartolomeo 22 Carnesecchi, Pietro 26 Caro, Annibale 21, 58, 250, 269 Casoni, Guido 124 Castaldi, Cornelio 2, 10, 13, 52, 65–68 Castelvetro, Lodovico 110, 112, 114, 116–120, 122, 125–128, 131, 133 Castiglione, Baldassare 31, 79, 173, 254, 259, 270 Castravilla, Ridolfo 179, 205 Catherine of Siena 101 Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus) 38, 43, 78, 275 Cavalcanti, Baccio 28 Cavalcanti, Bartolomeo 214 Cecco d'Ascoli 180 Celio Secondo Curione (Caelius Secundus Curio) 54 Cellini, Benvenuto 12, 103, 233–267, 270, 274–278 Ceppède, Jean de la 196 Cervini, Marcello 105 Charles V (emperor) 63 Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) 30, 65–66, 68, 78, 92, 212, 215, 239, 259 Cipriano (martyr) 119 Cocchi, Antonio 237, 263, 266 Coferino, Santino 156–157 Colao, Lucia 134, 144, 147 Colonna di Palestrina, Stefano 143 Colonna, Francesco 36 Colonna, Mario 217 Colonna, Stefano 134, 140, 142–145, 147, 159, 165–166 Colonna, Vittoria 8, 48, 99, 134–135, 141, 144, 158, 222, 251 Comin da Trino 150 Condivi, Ascanio 220, 237

Confuso, Mario 22 Contile, Luca 8, 134 Coppetta dei Beccuti, Francesco 23–24 Cornaro, Monsignor Vescovo di Padova 129 Corneille, Pierre 107–109 Corso, Rinaldo 134 Cortese, Paolo 66, 68 Crescimbeni, Giovanni Mario 2, 267 Curzi, Leonardo 113, 122, 130–131 Da Vinci. See Leonardo Dal Gorgo, Giambattista 34 Daniello, Bernardino 131 Dante. See Alighieri, Dante De Goro, Michele 238 De Jennaro, Pietro Jacopo 182 De Sanctis, Francesco 109 De' Medici, Cosimo I 236, 238, 240, 252, 258, 260–261 De' Medici, Girolamo Casio 77 De' Medici, Ippolito 28–30 De' Medici, Lorenzo 27, 171, 182, 214 De' Pazzi, Alessandro 106, 110 Degli Albizzi, Antonio 179 Degli Uberti, Fazio 180 Delicado, Francisco 82 Della Casa, Giovanni 20, 22–24, 31, 171, 212, 216–217 Delminio, Giulio Camillo 214 Demetrius (ps.-) of Phalerum (Demetrius Phalereus) 215 Denores, Jason 125–126 Di Lega, Giovanni Domenico 8, 105–107, 111, 113–117, 121–123, 130–131 Diomedes Grammaticus (Διομήδης Γραμματικός/Diomḗdēs Grammatikós) 106, 110 Dolce, Ludovico 20, 22, 30, 58, 60, 84, 99, 102, 218–219, 273 Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi) 238, 261–262, 276 Donati, Forese 62 Donatus (Aelius Donatus) 110 Doni, Anton Francesco 19, 99 Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste 202

Ennius (Quintus Ennius) 118 Erasmus of Rotterdam 25, 85, 89, 91–92, 101–102, 199 Euripides (Εὐριπίδης/Eurīpídēs) 105 Eusebi, Ambrogio degli 60

Faiani, Curtio 105 Fanzino, Sigismondo 60 Farnese, Vittoria 143 Farsetti, Tommaso Giuseppe 67 Fausto da Longiano, Sebastiano 48, 89 Favorinus of Arelate 270 Ferrari, Giovanni Francesco 23 Fiamma, Gabriele 6, 8, 135 Filelfo, Francesco 101, 168–169, 273 Filippo, Rustico di 62 Firenzuola, Agnolo 19–20, 22–24, 30, 82, 267, 270 Folengo, Teofilo 9, 36, 83, 173–174, 202–205, 274 Foresi, Bastiano 182 Fortunio, Giovan Francesco 169 Fracastoro, Girolamo 117–118, 270 Francesco, Milano da 25 Francis I (king of France) 79 Franco, Matteo 62 Franco, Nicolò 2, 8–10, 45–52, 57, 59–64, 87–88, 90–92, 98–99, 102, 135, 158, 166, 269 Franco, Veronica 9, 52 Franzesi, Mattio 19–21 Freggipane, Francesco (bishop of Agrigento) 150 Frezzi, Federico 180 Fronto, Marcus Cornelius 25 Gabriele, Trifone 174

Gaddi, Niccolò de' 84 Gambara, Veronica 134 Garofani, Anton Maria 34 Garzoni, Tommaso 20 Gelli, Giovan Battista 174–179, 218 Gerini, Francesco di Giuliano di Piero di Gerino 191–194 Gerson, John 128 Gesualdo, Giovanni Andrea 48, 89, 175, 178 Gherardo, Quinto 22 Giacomini, Lorenzo 121 Giambullari, Pierfrancesco 178–179, 220 Giberti, Giovan Matteo 19, 69, 77 Gioliti, Giovanni 88, 90 Giolito, Gabriele 90 Giorgio, Francesco. See Zorzi Giraldi Cinzio, Giambattista 114, 121–122, 124–125, 129–130, 158, 166, 183, 197 Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio 231 Giroldi, Giambattista 34 Giunteo da Montagnana, Pietro Fidenzio 33 Giustina (martyr) 119 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 109, 235, 237, 263–267 Graf, Arturo 2–3, 67, 81, 139 'Grappa', Cicalamenti del (anon.) 21, 235, 267–275 Gravina, Vincenzo 231 Grazzini, Antonio Francesco 14–15, 21, 23–24, 28, 267, 274 Gregory of Nazianzus 105 Gregory XIII (pope) 112 Grillo, Angelo 11, 107, 112–116, 120–125, 127–129, 132–133 Grillo, Luca 55 Grimani, Marino 113 Groto, Luigi 7 Guarini, Alessandro 217, 219–220, 230, Guarini, Giovan Battista 35, 124, 132, 182 Guidone, Giovanni Antonio 45–46, 60–61 Hermogenes (Ἑρμογένης/Hermogénēs) 178, 214, 260

Hesiod (Ἡσίοδος/Hēsíodos) 31 Homer (Ὅμηρος/Hómēros) 58, 78, 179, 182, 185, 205, 231, 273 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) 6, 26, 31, 38, 106, 110, 112, 118–120, 130, 248, 256, 273, 275 Hutten, Ulrich von 54

Jesus Sirach 165 Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) 182

Kempis. See Thomas à Kempis

Landino, Cristoforo 168–169, 175, 198–199, 201–202, 208, 220 Lando, Ortensio 100 Lasca. See Grazzini, Antonfrancesco Le Fèvre de la Boderie, Guy 196 Lelio, Antonio 54 Lenzoni, Carlo 178–179, 218, 224 Leo X (pope) 55, 194 Leonardo da Vinci 233, 236, 249, 254 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 108–109, 124 Liburnio, Niccolò 173–174 Liviera, Giovan Battista (Lattantio Calliopeo) 34, 113 Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo 260 Lombardi, Bartolomeo 106, 125 Longinus (ps.-) (Λογγῖνος/Longĩnos) 6, 231–232, 260 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) 117, 273 Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς/Lukianós hó Samosateús) 25, 82, 91, 270 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) 78 Lukan. See Lucan Luschino da Firenze, Fra' Benedetto 187–191 Machiavelli, Niccolò 89, 180–187, 191, 259, 277 Maggi, Vincenzo 106, 121, 125 Malipiero, Girolamo 8, 11, 133–135, 139–144, 146–156, 158–162, 164, 166 Manuzio, Aldo 36, 44–45, 100, 170, 177, 214–215 Marchiselli, Ludovico 112, 121, 125 Marcolini, Francesco 98–99 Marenzio, Luca 211–212, 217–218, 220 Marino, Giovan Battista 112–113, 133, 210–211 Martelli, Niccolò 99 Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis) 44 Martirano, Coriolano 105–106 Mazzoni, Jacopo 179, 205–211 Mazzuchelli, Giammaria (Mazzucchelli, Giovanni Maria) 81, 94 Medici. See De' Medici Melograno, Gio. Andrea del 84 Metafraste, Simeon 131

Metelli, Scipione 34 Michelangelo. See Buonarroti Miero, Pietro Antonio 143 Minturno, Antonio Sebastiano 99, 115–116, 125–128, 133, 183, 214 Molza, Francesco Maria 19–24, 30, 269 Morone da Taranto, Bonaventura 106, 112, 119–120, 123–126, 129–131 Müller, Friedrich von 109 Muzio Iustinopolitano, Girolamo 6, 8, 131 Navò, Curzio Troiano 14, 21–22, 100 Nelli, Pietro 22, 27 Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) 78 Nigro, Angelo (Albificato) 34 Nugent, Thomas 237, 266 Oddi, Sforza 35 Orsini, Leone 53, 87, 91 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) 5, 31, 38, 58, 78, 82, 144, 182, 187, 189, 261, 275 Pace, Fabio (Gallenico Irenio) 34 Padovano, Federico 84 Padovano, Giulio 20 Palladio, Blosio 19 Palmieri, Matteo 180 Panicarola, Francesco 124 Paterno, Ludovico 7 Patrizi da Cherso, Francesco 8, 183, 206, 209 Paul (saint) 107, 128, 163 Paul III (pope) 105, 238, 240 Peter (saint) 128 Petrarca, Francesco 1–2, 5, 8, 10–11, 16, 21, 28–30, 38–42, 48–49, 57–59, 64–68, 87–91, 97, 102, 113, 133–149, 151, 153–154, 156–163, 165–166, 168, 170–175, 177–178, 180–181, 187, 191, 193, 197, 202, 204, 211, 215–216, 218–219, 221–222, 235, 239, 246, 251, 253–254, 265, 268–275 Philostratus (Lucius Flavius Philostratus) 207

Piccolomini, Alessandro 209 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 169, 202, 214, 246 Pico, Gianfrancesco 66 Pigna, Giovan Battista 197 Pignatti, Bonifazio 91 Pignoli, Bonifazio 87 Pino, Paolo 143 Piombo, Bastian del 30 Plato (Πλάτων/Plátōn) 7, 106, 110, 206–207, 232, 273 Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus) 182 Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) 74, 186–187 Plutarch (Πλούταρχος/Ploútarchos) 186–187, 241 Poliziano, Angelo 7, 65–66, 68, 168–169 Polycrates 25 Pontano, Giovanni (Giovanni Gioviano) 91 Porta, Malatesta Francesco 112, 114–115, 120–121, 123, 125, 129, 131–132 Possevino, Antonio 112, 118, 121–122 Preti, Girolamo 112 Pseudo-Gregory of Nazianzus 105, 118, 122 Pseudo-Scroffa 33, 35 Pucci, Antonio 180 Pulci, Bernardo 182 Pulci, Luigi 28–29, 62, 93, 187, 197–198

Quadrio, Francesco Saverio 108, 113 Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus) 6, 239

Rabelais, François 270 Raimondi, Marcantonio 68–69 Raphael. See Sanzio Razzi, Girolamo 34 Robortello, Francesco 106, 110, 121, 125–126, 209 Romano, Giulio 68–69 Rota, Berardino 7 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 239 Ruscelli, Girolamo 22, 171, 183 Ruzante, Angelo Beolco detto il 103, 274

Sacchetti, Franco 169 Sagliano, Pietro Vincenzo 144 Saint-Évremond 108 Salicato, Altobello 91 Salvatorino, Giovanni Giacomo 134, 139, 147, 155–159, 161–166 Sannazaro, Iacopo 49, 63, 71–72, 102, 257 Sansedoni, Alessandro 22 Sansovino, Francesco 20, 22 Santa Teodora 113 Sanzio, Raffaello 218–219, 236 Sardi, Alessandro 179 Sardi, Tommaso 191–196 Sassetti, Filippo 179 Savonarola, Girolamo 11, 171–172, 187–192 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 106, 114, 117, 131, 214 Schiller, Friedrich von 109, 263, 266 Scroffa, Camillo 32–40, 42–44 Segni, Bernardo 106 Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger) 78, 198, 259 Shakespeare, William 1 Silius Italicus (Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus) 117 Simeoni, Gabriele 22, 27 Sommariva, Giorgio 182 Stampa, Gaspara 7 Steffonio S.J., Bernardino 115, 121 Strozzi, Camillo 33 Strozzi, Uberto 19 Surius, Laurentius 131

Tacuino, Giovan 135 Tasso, Bernardo 100 Tasso, Torquato 7, 115, 118, 124, 131–132, 144, 183, 197–202, 205–206, 209–210, 215–217, 219, 223–232, 252, 269 Tesauro, Emanuele 210–211 Theophilus (Theophilus Presbyter) 247 Thomas à Kempis 128 Thomas Aquinas 171 Tintoretto, Jacopo 219, 232 Tolomei, Claudio 100 Tolomei, Meo de' 27–28 Tomaso Bruno, Giovan 90 Tomitano, Bernardo 171 Treccio, Domenico 106, 123

Trissino, Giovangiorgio 8, 173, 176, 178–179, 183, 197, 214–215, 224 Trissino, Serrano 123 Tropotipo 34 Tucci, Stefano 105–106, 112, 114, 121 Valdaura, Bernardo 83 Valeriano, Pierio 67 Valgrisi, Vincenzo 134

Varchi, Benedetto 22, 42, 175, 179, 183, 205, 220, 237, 250–251, 253, 255, 259, 269–270 Vasari, Giorgio 69, 217–220, 235–237, 245, 250–251, 255–256, 259, 262 Vellutello, Alessandro 48, 87, 89, 199, 201–202, 273

Venier, Lorenzo 93–94, 96–97

Venier, Maffio 52, 94 Veniziano, Marco 25 Vettori, Pietro 125 Vico, Giambattista 231 Vida, Marco Girolamo 118, 121 Vignali, Antonio 269 Vinciguerra, Antonio 182 Viperano, Giovanni 121 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) 29–31, 38–39, 45, 51–52, 66, 78, 82, 102, 144, 179, 182, 185, 187, 214, 273

Zatti, Battista 69, 73 Zinano, Gabriele 132 Zoppio, Girolamo 176 Zorzi, Francesco (Francesco Giorgio Veneto) 194–196